Plastic is seen piling up in the Philippines. The locals found a unique way to tackle the problem. How? By bartering. (Image via The Straits Times)

Fighting plastic, the Filipino barter plastic for rice

Alfonsus Adi Putra
Business & Industry
Environmental Energy & Material
Sep 12, 2019
1642
To fight plastic pollution, people in the Philippines find an interesting way. Filipino people residing in Bayanan, south of Manila, barter rice for plastic. Of course, the step attracts the locals to immediately trade their trash for a sack of rice as it is the staple food for the people. Bayanan village chief, Andor San Pedro, stated that by the barter, the residents would learn how to dispose of their trash.

In August alone, Bayanan had already collected 213 kg of plastic trash.

For one kilo of trash, they will get two kilos of rice in exchange. One of the locals testified that after she had exchanged 14 kg of trash, she had got 7 kg of rice in return. A win-win solution indeed.

In the Philippines, one kg of rice costs about 30-40 pesos (US$0.70). While it looks cheap, for the Filipino, struck by the high poverty rate, it is expensive. Rice is a staple for Asian communities. There are 107 million Filipino people and one-fifth of them still live in poverty with less than US$241 for monthly consumption

The Philippines is the third-worst marine plastic polluter in the world, just behind China and Indonesia. What gives? One of the factors is that the Philippines lacks collection service and smaller island in the nation does not have any idea of how to properly dispose of their trash.

One of the environmental activists in the Philippines stated that in 2000, there emerged a regulation – Republic Act 9003 - for the Filipino people to dispose of or recycle their trash properly as a solution for plastic waste. However, due to the mass corruption of the fund and lack of will, the regulation was not properly circulated; hence, the trash persists.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/asia-waste-philippines-rice/filipino-villagers-swap-trash-for-rice-in-fight-against-plastics-idUSL3N2630SA

Environment , ASEAN , Philippines , Plastic , Pollution , Recycle , Barter , Rice