POLICIES ARE important to governance. Without policies, governments can’t protect, bring order and help their constituents live peacefully together. All the functions of governments – to make laws, to provide services and to keep order – involve policies. Laws, executive orders, and even the parliamentary rules of order that govern the enactment of laws, are sets of policies. The delivery of services is defined by guidelines and procedures (read: policies). Keeping order means making the people respect and uphold the laws of the land (again, read: policies) through reward and penalties.

Policies are also important when governments want to effect change. They serve as guides as to which direction society must take. Practices that were found valuable need to be institutionalized; those found detrimental need to be reexamined. For this purpose, existing laws and regulations can be amended and revised. If no law governs them yet, then a new one can be enacted. No amount of advocacy campaign can effect change unless it is coupled with some policies.

Take the case of the move of the municipality of Santa Barbara, Iloilo to regulate the use of plastic bags as part of the town’s exemplary solid waste management program. Recognizing the ill-effects of non-biodegradable plastic bags, it instituted a ban on and criminalized their use, except for those who sell ice candy, ice water and those who retail salt, sugar, coffee and milk. As a substitute, the town encouraged the use of bags made of buri (libon) or cloth (katsa), or other eco-friendly containers.

Plastic bags also decompose, but this will take at least 1,000 years. Society recognizes the detriment that they bring to the environment while they are around for a century. Flood-causing clogged drainage, diseases, greenhouse gases, etc. Worse, they are residuals with little chance of getting recycled. No matter how prominent is the recycling signs or notices on the bags, people simply ignore them. Plastic bags were made to make shopping convenient. And those who use them use them for convenience, and recycling plastic bags means, to some degree, an inconvenience. For businesses, substituting them with eco-friendly ones results to additional cost. And so the use of plastic bags are perpetrated, becoming a habit that’s difficult to break.

Studies showed that about 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. That means almost one million per minute, most of which end up as litter. They have become one of the most generated wastes in the world. We need not go far to know this. A quick visit to the Calajunan dumpsite will show us white, orange, yellow and blue sando bags decorating piles of garbage. A brief walk in our favorite stretch will show us the same colors. And simply try to imagine the number of people coming out of the malls carrying those groceries and goods every minute.

To curb the plastic bag menace, a number of cities and countries have banned them. Plastic bag use is discouraged in Australia, Bangladesh, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa and Taiwan. The cities of Mumbai (India), San Francisco (California) and Portland (Oregon) also prohibited the use of shopping bags; ditto in at least 30 villages and towns in Alaska. The island of Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean outlawed their importation to protect its tourism industry. In 2002, Ireland imposed a 15-cent levy on every plastic bag, resulting to a 95-percent reduction in their use. This was increased to 22 cents last July. A similar practice was introduced in Germany. 

Santa Barbara, Iloilo is the first town in the Philippines to adopt this novel initiative. A Galing Pook awardee for its solid waste management program, the town has become a learning resource center on how the garbage problem should be addressed. The municipality has played host to study tours, with participants wanting to learn from its best practices on waste. It is also considered the only town to have effectively implemented its No-Segregation, No-Collection Policy, constantly reminding the public of their duty or be meted with a fine and/or do community service. Barangays observing the rule receive free seedlings, planting materials and technical assistance for livelihood.

Worth mentioning is its Eco Park, formerly a 2.4-hectare dumpsite that was converted into a demo center for farming technologies. There, one can see fruit trees, gmelina, mahogany and organic vegetable growing alongside its Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) which is equipped with a shredder and serves as a temporary storage area for wastes collected from households and commercial establishments. It is also there were non-biodegradables are sorted into returnables or recyclables, while the biodegradables are shredded and transferred to a vermicomposting area. The sale from both the recyclables and the vermicomposts are used for the maintenance of the park.

Behind all these best practices are policies, developed with people’s support and implemented with a pile of political will. Attitudinal changes are achieved if they are resolutely molded by sets of parameters. Good habits and behaviors are sanctified if they are defined over time by rewards and penalties. It is here where government comes in, and it is the reason why it exists. French philosopher Albert Camus said that government does not have a conscience, only a policy. He is right. Forget leniency and severity. Laws, services and order function well if both the governing and the governed fairly and religiously observe and uphold policies.

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