The Effectiveness of the Single-use Plastic Ban in Quezon City in the Case of Supermarket Shoppers and Employees

Abstract

Plastic pollution is a worldwide environmental concern that plagues most of our bodies of water today. The Philippines is said to have the highest annual contribution to plastic emissions in the world, adding 0.28 to 0.75 million metric tons of plastic waste to the marine environment annually. With that, the country’s local government in Quezon City enacted an ordinance that bans the use of plastic bags in different establishments to reduce plastic consumption. This study aims to evaluate the said policy by investigating the environmental attitudes (ecocentric and anthropocentric) and the knowledge and application of the policy of supermarket shoppers and employees. A mixed-methods approach was used to gather data by distributing survey questionnaires in 10 supermarkets located in the 4th district of Quezon City. Results showed that the ordinance effectively reduced the plastic consumption of the stakeholders. However, nonresidents of the city seemed to be more knowledgeable about the policy than the Quezon City residents, prompting the local government to look for other methods of information dissemination to their constituents. The study also discovered that lessening plastic consumption is a behavior addressed by an anthropocentric attitude to the environment, suggesting that plastic pollution affects the quality of life of Filipinos. Lastly, problems of flooding and pollution were discovered to be the main environmental concerns of the stakeholders today. The researcher recommends using alternative pavement concretes in building roads, intervening in the lifecycle of plastics, and planting more trees to address these problems. Future researchers may also expand this study by exploring the stakeholders’ narratives about their environmental behaviors and comparing cities that are implementing plastic ban policies.