From March 11-15, IPEN participated in the fourth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA4) in Nairobi, Kenya from March 11th-15th. The meeting addressed the theme, 'Innovative Solutions for Environmental Challenges and Sustainable Consuption and Production."
For information about IPEN's activities, and for resources related to topics covered, click HERE.
EcoWaste Leads Move Against Canadian Illegal Dumping
Friday, 01 February 2019
For the past six years, EcoWaste Coalition, an IPEN participating organization from the Philippines that promotes chemical safety and zero waste, has been leading a movement to demand that Canada repatriate illegally dumped toxic household waste, which has been rotting in Philippine ports.
At issue are 103 shipping container vans of mixed garbage from Canada that were exported to the Philippines under the guise of “recycled goods.” The scandal began in 2013 when Canadian shipping containers entered Philippine ports and wrongly declared the household garbage as scrap plastics for recycling. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had made assurances in 2017 that he would resolve the stinking waste scandal. Today, the problem still festers.
A coalition of Philippine environmentalists have demanded that Canada take its trash back six years after more than 200 million kg of household waste was dumped in the Southeast Asian nation.
This SDG Knowledge Weekly spotlights recent findings and platforms on SDG 14 (life below water). The brief also reviews a few items on decarbonization towards SDG 13 (climate action), which researchers note plays a key role in ocean-related challenges.
Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental/Quezon City. The waste and pollution watch group, EcoWaste Coalition, applauded the departure from the Philippines of 51 containers of illegal garbage exports from South Korea extolling the move as a “triumph for environmental justice, morality and the rule of law.”
The 51 containers of illegal garbage languishing at the Mindanao International Container Terminal (MICT) in Tagoloan, Misamis Oriental were finally shipped back Sunday to South Korea where the assorted wastes came from several months ago.
Life on earth is utterly dependent on healthy oceans. They produce much of the oxygen we breathe, cycle the carbon dioxide, and regulate the weather we experience. Perhaps it is the vastness of the oceans that has made us complacent about its capacity to keep absorbing our toxic wastes?
After a year of global ocean meetings, the international community is finally facing up to the reality of polluted, depleted oceans.
Policies to protect the marine environment that do not address the finite nature of our world will fail.
The military regime's policy to promote industrial development with the use of the drastic Section 44, which bypasses regular laws and regulations, has won a thumbs-up from investors while also intensifying pollution and local conflicts.
