MANILA: The bureau of customs (BoC) filed on Thursday smuggling cases before the Department of Justice (DoJ) against the importer of a new batch of unsorted Canadian waste.
In a briefing, Customs Commissioner Alberto D. Lina said complaints were filed against Nelson Manio, owner of Angeles City-based Live Green Enterprises, for importing non-hazardous municipal solid wastes from Vancouver, which were misdeclared as “plastic scraps.”
The Customs bureau found only this May that the 48 container vans, shipped December 2013-January 2014, was full of unsorted waste, when Mr. Lina ordered ports to submit an inventory list of overstaying cargo.
The importation of unsorted waste violated laws that allowed only regulated imports of homogeneous plastic scrap materials cleared by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ Environmental Management Bureau (DENR-EMB).
According to import documents, the shipment was exported by Demetrios Jim Makris of Chronic, Inc., Canada. He was the same exporter who shipped 55 container vans of waste in 2013, consigned with a different importer, Chronic Plastics.
The earlier case is still pending before the courts, with the trial proper ongoing, said Legal Service Officer-in-Charge Edwin T. Mendoza.
Mr. Lina said: “Aside from filing charges, we are making sure that the Customs accreditation of companies engaged in the importation of heterogeneous wastes like Live Green Enterprises and Chronic Plastics are canceled.”
Sought for comment, Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment national coordinator Clemente Bautista said that the lodging of the complaints was a “positive step in making accountable those who are responsible.”
“But still, the DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs), DENR and President Aquino have not made any step to protest to the Canadian government the illegal entry and dumping of their trash in our country,” Mr. Bautista said.
He noted the government’s failure in the past two years to invoke the Basel Convention to oblige Canada to take back their trash and make Canadian companies accountable.
These illegal shipments have sparked an environmental and diplomatic controversy, as the DENR decided to consider the cases as commercial and dispose of the waste locally instead of asking Canada to take them back.
The province of Tarlac, meanwhile, refused to accept the 24 container vans (of the original shipment of 55) initially set to be dumped in the Capas landfill. Its Sangguniang Panlalawigan recently passed a resolution seeking to junk the dumping contract with the BoC.
On Wednesday, the Basel Action Network asked the Basel Convention secretariat to intervene in Canada’s alleged dumping of household wastes in the country, in light of the government’s refusal to lodge a diplomatic complaint against it.
