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Friday, November 05, 2004
Pena: Responsible corporate citizens
By Rox Peña
DURING one of our meetings in the Technical Working Group for the Implementing Rules and Regulations of the Clean Water Act (CWA), the issue of regulating domestic and agricultural wastewater discharges was lengthily discussed. This is because the new law will attempt to regulate these two biggest sources of water pollution. Untreated wastewater coming from houses is responsible for 48 percent of organic pollution of our bodies of water, agricultural run-off contaminated with pesticide and fertilizers contribute 38 percent and industry accounts for 15 percent.
In the CWA, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Public Works and Highways were tasked to formulate and implement a National Sewerage and Septage Management Program. This is an enormous task because at present, only 8 percent of Filipinos have access to sewerage system.
On the other hand, the Department of Agriculture (DA) was assigned to set guidelines for the prevention, control and abatement of pollution coming from agriculture and aquaculture sectors. How the DA will do it is a big challenge.
Take for instance the difficulty in tracing the exact source of pollution in a rice field with many farmers sharing the same irrigation system.
The Industries, the lifeblood of our economy, are the only ones presently regulated by the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) of the DENR though they are not the biggest source of water, air and solid waste pollution. Household or residential wastes constitute 50 to 70 percent of solid waste, while for air pollution, vehicle emissions are the major source.
Despite the highly regulated environment, many companies managed to carry on and have even become partners in community and nation building. Others go beyond mere compliance and adopt policies aimed at being responsible corporate citizens. Still others take their Environmental Management Systems (EMS) to world-class standards by adopting ISO 14001, an Internationally accepted system, which requires a comprehensive and structured means of ensuring compliance and continuous improvement. I'm happy to note that many companies based in our region like Yokohama, Sanyo, International Wiring System (IWS), TIPCO, SMK in Clark and Union Cement are certified to ISO 14001. San Miguel Corporation has also implemented ISO 14001 but they have an internal certification system conducted by their corporate headquarters.
Apart from continuously improving their own operations, some companies went the extra mile and initiated community environmental projects. Coke has its famous Aluminum Cans recovery project where the collected cans are sent to Tahanang Walang Hagdanan for conversion to wheelchairs. Philippine Recyclers Inc. (PRI) has teamed up with Bantay Kalikasan of ABS-CBN in its project "Bantay Baterya" to recover lead-acid batteries, which are considered hazardous. TIPCO has its wastepaper collection project and is active in organizing schools and communities. Its active involvement in the USED Paper project of the 35 government agencies in Central Luzon has made the program successful and is now duplicated in Region 1 and NCR.
San Miguel Corporation (SMC) is on the go in its PET. Bottle recycling program, after investing in a billion-peso state of the art recycling plant in San Fernando City. By the way, SMC also initiated a project in its host barangay, Quebiawan, a project dubbed "Malinis na Pamayanan, Susi ng Kaunlaran" and I was one of those who trained the barangay officials on Solid Waste Management. SMC also helped put-up the Barangay Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and assisted in organizing the Quebiawan's Women's Cooperative. My colleague from the recycling Movement of the Philippines, Ofie Panganiban, taught the women how to make money out of waste. They also went to Ugong in Pasig, again with SMC's help, to learn how doy-packs (packaging materials for juices) are turned into bags for export.
Companies with big hearts cannot keep their best environmental practices unto themselves. They would want to share it with others. It is within this context that we organized the Environmental Practitioners' Association (EPA) three years ago, a group of concerned professionals from concerned companies who want to simply make a difference. We partnered with our regulator, the Environmental Management Bureau of Region 3, and broke the walls that have long separated us. We look up to EMB as an enabler, no longer as a policeman, and they consider us as partners, complementing their limited resources. It is only through this collaboration that we can reach out to other companies, and help them be environmentally responsible as well.
After all, we live in the same world.
(November 5, 2004 issue)
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