Pasig River Run and the fight against plastic pollution

The Pasig River Run is afoot as I write this blog and I am wondering if this much advertised 'awareness generating' as well as 'fund generating' running event will really do anything for the Pasig River.

To really clean up the Pasig River, you have to be aware of what really makes it dirty and you don't have to pay money to run around the city to find out.

Go to your bathroom and kitchen sink.  All the waste water you create ends up in the Pasig River. (Well, yeah, first it goes to your septic tank and then that septic tank basically drains into the sewerage.)  What's worse is that most companies dump their waste water and other pollutants directly into the Pasig River.

Go to your garbage bins.  We can only hope that all the plastic packaging that comes with the goods that you buy ends up in the landfills outside of the city, where presumably, it will rot away and return to the earth.   

The proliferation of so-called 'bio-degradable' plastic bags and recyclable plastic packaging is misleading people into thinking that these plastics will disappear in a poof of smoke after a few weeks.  It won't.  Plastics are FOREVER.  

And the WORST NEWS SO FAR is that hundreds of tons of NON-RECYCLABLE PLASTIC SACHETS are being churned out by companies like UNILEVER, SAN MIGUEL, PROCTER and GAMBLE, NESTLE, and other companies.

The thing is, will Gina Lopez (the head of the Pasig River Rehabilitation Council) tell these TOP PLASTIC POLLUTERS to switch to REAL bio-degradable plastic packaging?

These TOP PLASTIC POLLUTERS happen to be the TOP ADVERTISING SPENDERS of ABS-CBN and the CORPORATE PARTNERS OF PRRC.

Just consider these rough estimations of how much plastic is generated by the TOP ADVERTISERS OF ABS-CBN:

Estimated impact of Plastics Pollution:

http://ecowastecoalition.blogspot.com/2010/05/public-urged-to-eliminate-plastic-waste.html

A discards survey in 2006 involving EcoWaste Coalition and Greenpeace volunteers shows that synthetic plastic materials constitute 76 percent of the floating trash items in Manila Bay, with plastic bags comprising 51 percent; sachets and junk food wrappers, 19 percent; Styrofoam containers, five percent; and hard plastics, one percent. The rest of the rubbish found in Manila Bay consisted of rubber (10 percent) and biodegradable discards (13 percent).

Another study published in 2009 by the US-based Ocean Conservancy revealed that 679,957 of over 1.2 million pieces of marine litter of various types that were gathered in seaside areas during the 2008 International Coastal Clean Up Day in the country were plastic bags.

 

http://pinoybiz.blogspot.com/2010/08/tax-to-curb-plastic-sachets-and-plastic.html

Giant consumer goods manufacturer Unilever claims that every day, it sells 160 million products. Assuming that the sales volume of the other manufacturing giants, Procter & Gamble and Nestle is in the vicinity of Unilever’s, that would be some 500 million products sold daily.

Let’s peg a conservative estimate that 10 percent of all products sold are in plastic sachets, then that’s 50 million. That’s 50 million plastic sachets and pouches that will eventually find its way to our oceans, waterways, landfills and drainage systems ready to clog the free flow of water and trigger floods or kill marine wildlife.

But it is really reasonable to think that of the 500 million products sold daily by the three giants, only 10 percent of are in tiny plastic sachets?

http://pasigriveravenger.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/saw-dingdong-dantes-and-angel-locsin-endorse-a-product-then-picture-this-people/

According to Unilever’s vice president for corporate planning Chito Macapagal, 70% of Unilever Philippines 2007 sales is from the sachet market. That’s 70% of 30 billion pesos, or 21 billion pesos three years ago. That’s nine zeroes following 21. The company was enjoying double digit growth rate from the previous year, so expect that by now those numbers are now not just big, but big big.

Can you picture how many sachets 21 billion pesos’ worth of Unilever products are? Well, let’s see. Which brands of theirs have sachet variants? Sunsilk, Creamsilk, Rexona, Clear, Knorr, Lady’s Choice, Close-Up, Best Foods, and Vaseline come to mind.

Moving on, 21 billion pesos in sachets, if say, the average price for any given sachet were 20 pesos conservatively (I say conservatively because first, most of those mentioned cost less than 20 pesos, and second, 21 billion pesos in Unilever’s sales is at supplier-to-distributor prices, would be equivalent to 1,050 million sachets.

If 1,050 million sachets were sold, then the waste would be 1,050 million multiplied twice to include front and back of the sachet, times 3 inches by 4 inches (I took an estimate of a Clear shampoo sachet), which equals 25,200 million square inches. This is the equivalent of about 16.26 square kilometers worth of sachet or wrapper material. Now, before you do take the initiative to shoot me for driving you nuts with numbers, picture this: 16.26 square kilometers of sachet is enough to cover all of Ilog Pasig.

Pnoy's surprise visit to an estero near Mendiola Bridge, calls to revive the Pasig River

Perhaps President Noynoy Aquino's brief visit to an estero near Malacanang a couple of days ago might have been a deliberate and symbolic act meant to get the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission to really start doing its job.  

Maybe it was also his way of signalling huge multinational corporations that operate on its banks to not only clean up their factory operations but also take more responsibility in ensuring their products do not end up polluting the Pasig River.

Then again, the only way to know for certain that his visit isn't just a publicity gimmick is if he follows this up with further action. 

At a time of water shortages and worsening traffic conditions, a revived Pasig river may be the key to providing solutions.

Up until the 1940s and 1950s, the Pasig River was a vital transport route -- being the country's first highway, provider of food and potable water.

Right now, the river is mostly black as death and stinks of it too.

Years ago, when the Piso Para sa Pasig Movement of the Ramos Administration was getting some attention in the media, I was given the rather inglorious task of writing a short documentary about efforts to revive the river for then Office of the Press Secretary's weekly TV magazine.

Back then, the Presidential News Desk and friendly media were milling articles saying that efforts to revive the Pasig River was succeeding.  Fish had returned, they said.  The smell and sight of the river had improved a lot, they said.

Of course, with the RTVM office sitting right on the bank of Pasig River, I knew there was some truth to what was being claimed.  But, then again, I also thought that the wonderful claims may have been embellished a bit.

So, after some initial hesitation, I eventually starting shooting video for the short documentary.  

I was able to get my video crew on board one of the PSG river boats that patrolled the banks of the Pasig river.  On that vessel, we were able to visit a pretty long stretch of the river and much to my surprise, only certain sections along the river really gave off the smell of sewerage.  These were the sections where the banks had a pretty large squatter population, sections where esteros were feeding into the river, and sections where raw sewerage was pouring into the Pasig River (specially the one near Quinta Market Quiapo and near Binondo).

I expected that river sections near factories or industrial complexes would be blacker and stinkier, however, much to my surprise, it wasn't.

Based on the little that I observed, I was sort of convinced that households and commercial establishments contributed more to the pollution of the Pasig river than large companies that operated on its banks.  

This view was supported years later by a study made by the Linaw Foundation, a USAID funded organization that helps communities build water sanitation facilities, that said that households and commercial establishments (rich and poor alike) contributed more significantly to water pollution than factories.

Recently, I got wind of an article where Unilever was brandishing its wonder water treatment facility that made water coming from its plant so clean that Kois could live in it.

In an article in Philippine Star titled "Green makes good business ", Unilever crows:

“We want to make sure that we’ll be able to grow our business without raising the impact of our operations on the environment, “ says Chito Macapagal, vice president for Corporate Affairs of Unilever Philippines. “Sustainability is the key here and by implementing such practices now, we achieve a two-fold mission – growing our business by bringing vitality to the lives of individuals and to the community.”

One notable effort is the company’s wastewater treatment facility in its manufacturing plant in Paco, Manila which has been in place since 1994. Wastewater from plant operations go through several processes – including a bath of germ-killing natural bacteria – to make sure that no toxic residue reaches the nearby 25-kilometer waterway which ultimately flows into the Pasig River. The whole system is so effective that the treated water also becomes the habitat of the company’s koi fish.

 This may be so, but it doesn't necessarily let Unilever off the hook.

Even as it makes a biggie out of how clean its factory operations are, it doesn't say anything about the damage done by the plastic sachets of its products -- a significant amount of which ends up clogging drains and esteros.

This article on Pasig River Avenger talks about the sachet problem more fully:

http://pasigriveravenger.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/it’s-a-small-and-filthy-world-after-all/ 

Today, leading consumer goods manufacturers Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Nestle have saturated market shelves with their products in plastic sachets and pouches.

Sadly, the sachet revolution not only filled our shelves but also landfills, waterways and other places where they are dumped, clogging drainage facilities ad triggering massive environmental damage like floods.

Just remember Ondoy  last year and the massive flooding it caused, blamed largely on clogged drains.

Yes, products in sachets are answers to the deteriorating purchasing power of people, (though the same is disputed by economists and business analysts) and manufacturers have the right earn profits by supplying that need,  which they have been doing for many years now.

But how about the moral obligation of being more active in helping clean up the mess caused by the proliferation of their products in sachet?

Globally, there have been mounting calls for giant consumer goods manufacturers like Unilever, Nestle and Procter & Gamble to help in the clean up, but sadly, all we ever got were press releases, publicity stunts and other short term gimmicks meant to silence the issue.

Behind their glitzy gimmicks and other programs, sadly, the problem of mounting piles of plastic sachets in our dumps is still there.

 The thing is, will Unilever get out of the lucrative sachet market in order to maintain its claims of being a protector of the environment?

Stinky river Pasig

I was rather glad that my former boss Sen. Richard Gordon finally got to open the Maestranza Wall in Intramuros. 

It should be yet another addition to Manila's tourist attractions, however, one thing that will definitely go against it is the stink that comes from the Pasig River.

Despite the almost European feel of the place, I can't imagine eating Al Fresco or EATING AT ALL in that area.  The place stinks like shit, especially after it rains -- because that is when the esteros or tributaries dump hundreds of thousands of liters of rank sewerage and trash.

Can you imagine going out on a date near the Maestranza wall?

The reason why I am glad about the Maestranza wall's opening is because it will focus attention on just what is being done to revive the river.

Despite the glossy and noisy 'Save the Pasig River' movements... Despite the billions of corporate money thrown into it, why is the river is still dirty?

Where did all the money from Piso para sa Pasig go?

Also, where did all the river clean up money from big corporations like Unilever go? I'd hate to think that all that it really amounted to was PR, when in fact, nothing is really being done to revive the river.

One sign that President Noynoy Aquino's drive against corruption is actually taking effect would be if the Pasig River finally begins to get cleaner.

If the Pasig River starts getting really cleaner, then perhaps it would mean that environmental laws  and anti-dumping laws are finally being enforced -- wala nang nakakapaglagay sa DENR and LGUs.

Perhaps, cleaning up the Pasig River would be a great showcase for the Aquino Administration.

A cleaner Pasig River would be a better symbol than the BANGKANG PAPEL of the three squatter kids.