“The government must respond with the same urgency and resolve.”
CAGAYAN DE ORO — An international toxic waste watchdog and its partner organizations in the country have urged the Philippine government to promptly respond to another set of suspected electronic waste (e-waste) being transported from the United States.
In a statement, the Basel Action Network (BAN) and non-government organizations under the Environmental Task Force Against Illegal E-Waste Imports to the Philippines (End E-Waste Imports) sent out a new alert on July 29 to the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) pertaining to the 184 shipping containers containing suspected e-waste from the U.S.
This is part of BAN’s Operation Can Opener (OCO), a program that tracks intermodal containers carrying hazardous and problematic wastes, including e-waste, and sends alerts to destination countries.
The containers, the concerned groups said, are expected to arrive at the Subic Bay Freeport Zone between August 6 and September 30.
Environmental group BAN Toxics welcomed BOC’s prompt response to three containers earlier flagged by BAN that carried suspected e-waste from the US. An Inquirer report stated that the said containers, which were declared to contain scrap copper, were aboard MV Tokyo Express.
A vessel online tracker shows that the vessel arrived in Subic Bay on July 21 and departed on July 23 going to Nansha, China.
Courtesy of Vesselfinder.com
“But that was three containers. BAN has now identified 184 more suspected containers, and the government must respond with the same urgency and resolve,” Jam Lorenzo, BAN Toxics deputy executive director and one of the convenors of task force End E-Waste Imports, said in a statement.
Prior to these, BAN revealed that a total of 234 suspected containers of e-waste and one plastic waste from the U.S. have been allegedly dumped in the country since March 2025, prompting local environmental and progressive groups to launch a task force to prevent this from happening.
Read: Watchdog exposes illegal dumping of US e-waste in the Philippines
Under Article 4(5) of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, hazardous wastes and other wastes shall not be allowed to be imported from a non-state party or to be exported to a non-state party, unless there is a bilateral agreement.
The Philippines is a state party of the convention, while the U.S. is not.
On June 29, together with the task force End E-Waste Imports, Kabataan Party-list Rep. Renee Co and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio filed a resolution urging the House of Representatives to launch an investigation into the alleged dumping of e-waste from the US.
Contributed photo
Read:Makabayan bloc urges probe on US e-waste dumping
The groups stressed that the suspected containers should be detained and inspected to determine whether they contain e-waste. If this will be proven, they urged the Philippine government to use the 2001 bilateral agreement so that U.S. authorities will be responsible to ensure that the waste won’t be re-exported by the original exporters.
“Sending these shipments back informally, container by container, is not enough. Because the US is not a Party to the Basel Convention, too often, the same waste can be simply rerouted to another unsuspecting country,” said Jim Puckett, BAN founder and chief of strategic direction.
The End E-Waste Imports task force called on the national government to prevent any agreement between the Philippines and the US that would legalize the exportation of e-waste. (RVO)
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