President Rodrigo Duterte has raised the idea of banning single-use plastics nationwide.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the suggestion came from Duterte during the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. He said this was brought up during talks on climate change resiliency. "The President floated the idea to ban the use of plastics, which according to him would require legislative action," he said in a statement on Thursday.
A number of bills to end the use of single-use plastics have been filed in Congress. With the absence of a national law, local governments have passed ordinances to lessen the use of plastics. A 2015 report on plastic pollution conducted by the international group Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment ranked the Philippines as the third biggest source of plastics leaking into the oceans, following China and Indonesia.