The Senate will conduct on Monday afternoon a hearing on the environmental damage that plastic materials bring into the sea.
Senator Cynthia Villar, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, will preside over the inquiry that seeks to fund ways to cut plastic wastes.
The senator notes that the Philippines now ranks third, after China and Indonesia, among 192 countries with mismanaged plastic wastes dumped into the seas.
The survey is based on a study conducted by the University of Georgia.
“This report is quite alarming amid the presence of abundant findings that the presence of plastic wastes in the seas affects the marine life and eventually the world’s food chain,” Villar says.
Resource persons invited for the Senate hearing include Biodiversity Management Bureau Director Theresa Mundita Lim and Eco-Waste Coalition National Coordinator Aileen Lucero, as well as representatives of various government agencies and manufacturing companies.