MANILA, Philippines — Environmental group EcoWaste Coalition urged Canada to act swiftly on President Rodrigo Duterte’s ultimatum to take back its trash earlier shipped to the Philippines.
“Now that President Duterte has given a seeming ultimatum for Canada to act and now that there is a clear-cut legal opinion confirming that Canada has the obligation to take back the wastes illegally shipped to the Philippines, we urge Prime Minister Trudeau to do what is right to bring this hullabaloo to rest,” Aileen Lucero, National Coordinator of EcoWaste Coalition, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The statement came after the President threatened to declare war on Canada if it fails to take out its trash from the Philippines by next week.
READ: Duterte to Canada: Take trash back or else I’ll declare war
With this, the environmental organization asked Canada to announce a definite date when it would get its garbage back.
“We are counting on Canada to announce without delay a clear and definite date by which it will take back its wastes,” Lucero said.
Meanwhile, EcoWaste asked the Duterte administration to “outlaw foreign waste importation” and ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, which bans the “transboundary movements of hazardous wastes from developed to developing countries.”
The group added that the garbage dumping scandal shows insufficiency in Philippine laws and lack of defense against entry of trash.
“The Canadian dumping scandal serves as a stark reminder of the insufficiency of our laws and the need for a stronger defense against the entry of wastes and toxics that could be better managed in exporting countries.” Lucero said.
Between 2013 to 2014, the Bureau of Customs intercepted 103 shipping containers of mixed garbage from Canada which was declared as “recyclable scrap plastics.” /muf