Pollution Reduction and Waste Management

The End of Project Stakeholders Forum for the Philippine Component of the ASEAN Norway Cooperation Project on Local Capacity Building to Reduce Plastic Pollution (ASEANO) was held on 6 July 2022 at the BayLeaf Hotel in General Trias, Cavite, Philippines.

In 2020, the Plastics Policy Inventory and accompanying report, 

The National Plan of Action for the Prevention, Reduction and Management of Marine Litter (NPOA-ML) has been developed to provide a blueprint to enhance the current efforts of the country in resource and waste management and to bring additional lens to marine litter issues and the control of additional leakage of waste into bodies of water.

This document has been developed through a multi-stakeholder consultative process led by the Government of Philippines’ Department of Environmental and Natural Resources through its Environmental Management Bureau, in close cooperation with Biodiversity Management Bureau and other government agencies, partners from the business sector, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders. It was carried out with support from the United Nations Development Programme.

Marine microplastics are emerging pollutants that impact across levels of marine food chain at a global scale. Its presence was determined on Sardinella lemuru, a commercial pelagic fish that are harvested generally in the Northern Mindanao, consumed locally, and exported worldwide as bottled or canned sardine products. The stomach contents of 600 sardines were examined visually under a microscope, stained with Rose Bengal, and tested with hot needle technique to identify ingested microplastics.

Marine plastics have been shown to affect all organisms across the trophic levels including the microbial communities, influencing their community assembly, composition, metabolic processes, and ecosystem functions. Thus, studying plastic-microbe interactions in the marine environment is important in understanding its implications alongside the growing issue of plastic pollution.

The first of YSLME's Information Series showcases recent studies and actions being undertaken to address key challenges in the Yellow Sea region.

As plastic waste flows into the world’s oceans at alarming rates, support for a global framework to tackle the ocean plastic crisis is rapidly growing.

Oceans and seas contribute approximately $3-6 trillion annually to the global economy in terms of the market value of goods and services including fisheries, energy, shipping, tourism, recreational, and mining sectors, as well as non-market ecosystem services such as climate regulation, nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration.