BUSINESSES are advised to produce more sustainable products and services as key stakeholders across different sectors need to work closely together to minimize the impact on the environment of every consumer behavior and shape a circular economy.
Department of Trade and Industry’s Consumer Protection Group (CPG) Undersecretary lawyer Ruth Castelo said the department has been pushing for sustainable consumption and production for several years.
“And we want to turn challenges on plastic waste disposal into opportunities for businesses,” Castelo said in a webinar organized by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
“Sustainable consumption and production is doing more and better with less. It is about decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation. It is also about increasing resource efficiency as well as promoting sustainable lives,” said Castelo.
She said sustainable consumption and production can contribute substantially to the transition toward a low carbon and green economy.
In line with producing sustainable products, Castelo underscored the importance of having changes as well in corporate practices and in different relationships with suppliers.
“New and more sustainable products can struggle to get scale and compete with established offerings. The need to engage suppliers also poses a new challenge as supply chains can be opaque and highly complex, making it difficult to assess and manage the impacts of a specific product,” she said.
Castelo said her group has written a letter to the largest online platforms in the country to reduce the plastics that they use in the packaging of their parcels.
“We have also sent reminders and memorandums also to food retailers, fast food chains and even restaurants to always ask the consumer if they want plastic spoons and forks. Otherwise, please don’t put them in the basket. Let the consumer ask for it when you are in the process of packaging the goods that they purchase,” she added.
Castelo said online businesses must also promote more eco-friendly production and consumption by explicitly putting on their websites or social media accounts or press releases that they use alternative products and they at least attempt to reduce the use of products that are not sustainable.
For consumers, Castelo said there are various ways to contribute to a more circular economy.
“We can minimize wastes and pollution, we can keep materials that are in use, we can support and promote buying green products but, of course, we will have to verify the product should be labeled as such. And before they are sold into the market, somebody or some entity would need to verify that these products are actually green before they are bought by consumers,” she said./ PHILEXPORT