Tambuling Batangas Publication January 02-08, 2019 Issue | Page 5

OPINYON
January 2-8, 2019
A call for a stronger measure against

With
the
incessant
single-use plastic
rise of global production and
By Eunice E. Dela Cruz
QUEZON CITY -- In the course
of time, plastic has become a
customary part of Filipinos’ daily
life. From drinking to eating
and to personal doings, people’s
undertakings depend mainly on
this buoyant material. To note, one
plastic used seems to be of less
concern to us until we realize that
millions of it are thrown away —
everyday. Our reliance to plastics,
true to say, has infiltrated our lives.

The deluge of plastics
in the country’s rivers, seas,
and other waterways posed an
alarming threat that detrimentally
affects our marine ecosystems.
Over time, this top pollutant has
endangered marine biodiversity.
In the country, around 2.7 million
metric tons of plastic wastes
such as plastic bags, coffee cups,
bottled waters, straws, and food
packaging or wrappers are being
mismanaged every day, which
mostly wind up in the ocean.
Thus, this prevalent issue calls for
a strong measure.
consumption of plastics, it
is but proper to put into law
long-term solution to end this
perennial problem. Among the
bills that have been filed to curb
this environmental challenge
is Senator Loren Legarda’s
proposed Senate Bill 1948 or the
“Single-Use Plastics Regulation
and Management Act of 2018.”

This bill seeks to
regulate
the
manufacturing,
importation, and use of single-
use plastic products or those that
are used once before discarded.
For love of country
JOSE Rizal is said to have first
expressed his sense of nation,
and of the Philippines as a nation
separate from Spain, as a young
student in Manila. Proof of this,
it is said, can be found in two of
his writings. In his poem “To
the Philippine Youth”, which he
wrote in 1879, when he was 18
years old (and which won a prize
from the literary group), Rizal
speaks of the Filipino youth as the
“Fair hope of my Motherland”,
and of the “Indian land” whose
“son” is offered “a shining
crown”, by the “Spaniard… with
wise and merciful hand”. Still in
this poem, Rizal considered Spain
as a loving and concerned mother
to her daughter Filipinas.

In his memoirs as
a student, later published as
Reminiscences, he spoke of the
time spent in his sophomore year
at the Ateneo as being essentially
the same as his first year, except
that this year, he felt within
himself the stirrings of “patriotic
sentiments” and of an “exquisite
sensibility”. He might have been
only referring to the sense that
the Philippines, was a colony of
Spain, and as such, the Philippines
was a part of Spain. If this were
the case, his patriotism was
therefore directed toward Spain
for being the Philippines’ mother
country. Seen in another light,
these words may have evidenced
Rizal’s moment of epiphany, his
own portent of a future time when
he would awake to the tragedies
that were the lot of his fellow
indios, the rightful heirs of the
Filipinas their motherland.

Some cite Rizal’s verse-
play “Beside the Pasig” (written
in 1880, when was 19), as his
allegory of the Filipinos’ bondage
under Spain; however, the play’s
protagonists are a young boy
named Leonido, who defends
the Christians, and Satan, who
speaks against Spain for bringing
Christianity to the Philippines.

As fate had it, Rizal
ultimately awoke to the real
state of the Philippines under the
hands, not of a loving Mother
Spain, but of an exploitative
despot represented by the
colonial government in Manila
and the friars who held great
influence over the government.
His awakening may have come
by way of his own experiences
at the university, his family’s
experience at the hands of the
religious group that owned their
farmland; and perhaps, from
the stories about the reformist
movement and the sacrifice of the
three priests, collectively known
as Gomburza, of ten years before.
This last most likely were from
his older brother Paciano, who
had been close to Fr. Jose Burgos,
and had been an outspoken critic
of abuses during his years in
college at the Colegio de San
Jose.

Rizal saw the many
injustices suffered by his fellow
Filipinos: they depended on the
religious corporations or on big
landowners, for land to till, or for
their living; people were afraid
of airing their grievances or of
talking or protesting against the
friars or the government, in short,
there was no real freedom of the
press or speech. Most Filipinos
lacked the privilege of education,
and its resultant benefits, or if
they did have education, this was
the obscurantist kind generally
propagated by the colonialist
policy, which not only kept
Filipinos in the dark about their
rights, but worse, had molded
them into an abject, submissive
people ignorant or worse,
ashamed of their own proud
heritage, a heritage that existed
even before the arrival of the
Spaniards. Finally, Rizal realized
that the Philippines had not been
consistently represented in the
Spanish parliament. For Rizal,
this was the root of the absence of
justice in the country, or of their
being deprived of basic rights.

His essay “Love of
Country” which he wrote in
June 1882 (but appeared in the
newspaper Diariong Tagalog
Manila in August), when he was
already in Spain, and he was 21
years old. In it he talks of “love
of country” which “is never
effaced once it has penetrated
the heart, because it carries with
it a divine stamp..;” that it is
“the most powerful force behind
the most sublime actions” and
for that reason, love of country
“of all loves…is the greatest,
the most heroic and the most
disinterested”. He speaks of the
Motherland for whom “some
have sacrificed their youth, their
pleasures…others their blood; all
have died bequeathing to their
Motherland…Liberty and glory.”

It can be inferred from
his words that at this point
Rizal’s sense of nation was now
fully-formed and complete, and
perhaps not by happenstance,
its expression coincides with
his departure from his country.
While there is still no outright and
open criticism of the friars, or the
colonial government, or even of
Spain for he may have only been
being careful, Rizal by this time
had become a nationalist and had
gone abroad for the cause of his
countrymen. This is confirmed
by a line from a letter written to
him by his friend Vicente Gella,
in the same month he wrote
“Love of Country”, (June 1882):

“If the absence of a son
from the bosom of his esteemed
family is sad, no less will be that
of a friend who, being very dear
to all of us …his friends and
comrades, now is away from us
It also provides penalties, levies,
and incentives for industries,
businesses,
and
consumers.
Furthermore, this measure intends
to phase out single-use plastics
in the country by prohibiting
importation and use in food
establishments, stores, markets,
and retailers.

The need to ban
single-use plastics is one of
the effective and immediate
ways to reduce waste especially
as Ocean Conservancy and
McKinsey Center for Business
and Environment singled out
the Philippines as one of five
major countries that contribute to
plastic wastes along with China,
Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

With the said bill also
urging participation of government
agencies, Philippine Information
Agency (PIA) heeded the call
as it already banned single-use
plastic within its arm. Among its
personnel and staffs, PIA Director-
General Harold E. Clavite offered
alternatives to single-use plastic
such as utilization of personalized
tumblers, mugs, and other eco-
friendly items to eradicate
consumption of plastic waste.

Continuous practice of garbage segregation and proper
waste disposal by reusing,
reducing and recycling were also
in effect within the agency as an
effective and efficient step towards
curtailing usage of plastic. PIA
sees this action as a contribution
to save the environment as well as
making the oceans sustainable for
future generation.

This significant move
of government agencies and
institutions and the strengthened
enforcement of Republic Act
(RA) No. 9003 or the Ecological
Solid Waste Management Act
are set to be a valuable approach
towards solving plastic pollution
coinciding with the attainment of
United Nations (UN) Sustainable
Development Goals.

Still, while there are laws
and regulation towards single-use
plastic, it is important that these
are strictly implemented and
enforced. At the end of the day, it
is still the public’s engagement and
support towards this endeavour
that will greatly contribute to the
reduction of plastic wastes’ impact
not just in the environment, but
most importantly, in our lives, too.
(Story by EEDC / Graphics by
AMN / PIA-CG)
seeking the welfare that we all
desire. Had it not been for that,
the separation would have been
more painful for the distance that
separates us. May God help you
for the good that you do to your
fellow countrymen.”

Another letter written
by his friend Jose M. Cecilio,
dated August 28, 1882, also
corroborates this:

“I’m very glad that
you will go to Madrid where
you can do many things in favor
of this country jointly with the
other Filipinos..so long as they
will not give us freedom of the
press, abuses, arbitrariness, and
injustices will prevail more than
in other parts of the world.”

Ultimately, it does
not matter when or even how
Rizal’s politicization came, or
why he went abroad: to complete
his medical studies there; or,
to expand his opportunities for
establishing himself as a writer;
or to embark on a career as an
activist-writer who would use
his pen to secure long-needed
reforms in the social and political
fabric of his country.
And
because the space for agitating
for changes in the country was
getting smaller by the day, it was
time for him to leave. Under
his leadership, together with the
other Filipino youth, the Reform-
or Propaganda movement– as it
became known, flourished and
triumphed. It triumphed not in
the sense that it attained its main
goals of obtaining parliamentary
representation for the Filipinos,
and freedom of the press, for
these did not come to pass, but in
the after- effects of its campaign,
despite its apparent failure: other
youths followed in their footsteps
and took the next step- to begin
the campaign for separation
and independence.
This was
carried out by Bonifacio and the
Katipunan, which launched the
Revolution that, in turn, led to the
birth of the Filipino nation.

And so Rizal became
a crusader for his country’s freedom. He decided that love
of country should supplant all
other considerations, even that
of his family or his own, or even
of the woman he loved. From
his correspondence with friends
and family, he remained constant
to his Muse and his cause: the
Motherland and her freedom.

When he had completed
his education, and his formation
as a son deserving of the
Motherland, Rizal felt it was
time to return to her. Friends
and family stopped him from
returning, but he was determined
to do so, for he believed that the
true arena for the fight was his
country itself, not some foreign
land. In a letter dated October
1891, Rizal wrote,

“If our countrymen are
counting on us here in Europe,
they are very much mistaken…
The battlefield is the Philippines:
There is where we should meet…
there we will help one another,
there together we will suffer or
triumph perhaps. The majority
of our compatriots in Europe are
afraid, they flee from the fire,
and they are brave only so long
as they are in a peaceful country!
The Philippines should not count
on them; she should depend on
her own strength.”

Rizal returned to the
land of his birth knowing that
its liberty cannot be “obtained…
without pain or merit… nor is it
granted gratis et amore.”9 He was
prepared to return despite the risk
of death, as he had written in June
1892 days before his arrival in
Manila: “I offer my life gladly…
Let those who deny us patriotism
see that we know how to die
for our duty and convictions…
What does it matter to die, if one
dies for what one loves, for the
Native Land?” Rizal returned
and offered up his life for his
nation’s freedom four years later.
Would that the nation born out of
the ashes of his sacrifice continue
to look up to him and live up to
the legacy he left behind. (Ma.
Cielito Reyno, 2012 / NHCP)