8-10 Filipinos prefer environment-friendly products — Pulse Asia survey

A Pulse Asia survey exhibits 83% of Filipinos favor environment-friendly services from manufacturers with environment-friendly operations.

The outcomes of the survey — carried out from November 27 to December 1 and commissioned by Stratbase ADR Institute — was introduced by Pulse Asia President Ronald Holmes in Thursday’s discussion board on sustainable and strategic waste administration.

“The message is clear: a sizable majority of Filipinos will support enterprises that have environment-friendly operations and products,” mentioned Holmes on the discussion board organized by the Stratbase ADR Institute, the Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship (PBEST), and The Climate Reality Project Philippines.

“The question now is whether industries or firms will be able to cater to this preference,” he added.

Participants of the survey were asked “As a client, do you favor to patronize merchandise and/or companies of manufacturers or enterprises that you simply consider have environment-friendly operations or merchandise?”

While the term “environment-friendly” was not explained to them, the survey results showing Filipinos’ sentiment toward sustainability couldn’t have come at a better time.

Climate change is a growing concern worldwide, with scientists already sounding the alarm. The world must limit its warming to 1.5C to 2C in accordance with the 2015 Paris Agreement.

But according to the latest report by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2021, Earth is projected to hit 1.5 or 1.6C in seven short years, or around 2030.

At a recent IPCC briefing arranged by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, Dr. Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer in Climate Science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London and member of Working Group 1 of the IPCC, said “it is nonetheless the time to behave. Not a time to despair.”

Luckily, there are plenty of ways for businesses and large corporations to act toward becoming environment-friendly and slow climate change.

At Thursday’s forum, Stratbase ADR Institute, the Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship (PBEST), and The Climate Reality Project Philippines all pushed for circular economy.

Under the Extended Producer Responsibility Law of 2022, (EPR) circular economy refers to an economic model of efficiently utilizing resources by its continual use and retaining the highest utility and value of products through sharing, leasing, reuse, repair, refurbishment, and recycling in an almost closed loop.

It is the exact opposite of the current linear economic “take-make-waste” model, where raw materials extracted from natural resources end up as waste on land, water, and air.

At Thursday’s event, Environment Assistant Secretary and DENR-Environmental Management Bureau Director Gilbert Gonzales said a circular economy “presents a technique and a pathway that might probably cut back GHG emissions throughout the financial sectors and worth chains, by remodeling the way in which merchandise are designed and used, and derive extra worth from merchandise by way of higher product design, elevated value-retention of supplies, and diversion of waste from landfills.”

Climate Reality Project Philippine Branch Manager Nazrin Castro echoed Gonzales and said “A round financial system may help keep away from extreme consumption, waste and use of fossil fuels by leasing, reusing, repairing, and recycling current supplies and merchandise.”

At the occasion, Climate Reality Leader Carlo Delantar and Circular Economy Pioneer on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, underscored three rules of round financial system: (1) designing out waste and air pollution, (2) holding merchandise and supplies in use, and (3) regenerating pure techniques.

So companies can transition to circularity by shifting to renewable vitality, as an example, or adapting to a refilling distribution technique to restrict waste and curb plastic air pollution.

Management Association of the Philippines Vice President Alexander Cabrera shared numerous round business fashions already altering the non-public sector panorama within the nation, together with round inputs (utilizing renewable, recycled, or extremely recyclable inputs within the manufacturing course of), sharing financial system (maximizing idle property by renting or main it), product as service (promoting the identical product to the utmost quantity of individuals over and over); product use extension (designs merchandise for repairability, upgradability reusability, reconditioning, and recyclability of all parts), and useful resource restoration (recovering embedded supplies, vitality, and assets from merchandise on the finish of use).

At the occasion, Cabrera mentioned a round financial system mannequin is not going to solely profit the setting and society however may add worth to companies.

And with a majority of Filipinos preferring environment-friendly merchandise and companies with environment-friendly operations, maybe it is time for companies to contemplate going round. — GMA Integrated News