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.
