Ban Toxics!

The lecture was all about toxic waste materials. The lecture was
encouraging everybody to promote Environmental Justice. It stresses the
point that a safe and healthy environment is a human right and our state
should do necessary things to protect it.
During the lecture, the issue about Canada's Waste was mentioned.
The speaker elaborated what was it all about and how Canada violated the
rules in waste dumping. Different institutions that were concerned for the
environment worked on and held a meeting. Different actions to remediate
the problem were made. They all agree that there must be an order or a
regulation to prevent another issue about waste dumping of other countries
to our own land. Basel Ban Amendment was mentioned, this was one of
recommendations of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
They said that this Amendment must be ratified by the Philippine
Government to monitor and control waste disposal in the Philippines. The
said amendment prohibits transboundary movements of hazardous wastes
from industrialized countries to developing countries.
The latter part of the lecture was about "E-waste", these are hazardous
wastes that come from our electronic devices and appliances. It was
mentioned in the lecture that these kind of wastes were getting bigger in
number and the projected amount of e-waste by 2020 were alarming. And if
these kind of wastes will not be controlled it will cause problems in the
environment such as pollution of ground water, acidification of soil, air
pollution etc. In addition to these effects, health problems may also arise like
DNA damage, lung cancer, damage to heart, liver and spleen, chronic
damage to brain, asthmatic bronchitis etc.
Overall, the lecture helped to educate students like me about
hazardous wastes that were prevailing in our country. And the lecture also
stated that, if inadequacy in knowledge and research about abundance of

hazardous waste such as e-waste will still continue, the health issues and
environmental problems will still be exposed to our community. We all must
help in disseminating these information and try to improve ourselves as a
consumer.