PH customs says 6,500 tons of waste to be sent back to South Korea next week

It was a long time coming but it’s finally going to happen.

The 6,500 mixed waste that came from Pyeongtaek City in South Korea and currently stored at a terminal in Misamis Oriental will be sent back to its city of origin on Jan. 9, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) announced yesterday.

CNN Philippines reported that the Philippines and South Korea came to this agreement during a meeting held on Dec. 27 last year.

The meeting was attended by more than 35 participants including Lee Jong Min of South Korea’s Ministry of Environment, reported Rappler.

Initially, 5,100 tons of garbage arrived at the Mindanao International Container Terminal (MICT) in July last year. The rest of the waste arrived in October and all of the waste shipments were transferred to the compound of a South Korean company named Verde Soko Philippines Industrial Corp in the town of Tagoloan in the same province, ABS-CBN reported.

Verde Soko reportedly runs a waste recycling facility.

BOC officials said the company failed to secure the proper importation permit from the government. It also allegedly failed to declare that the shipment contained waste, and instead said that they were composed of plastics which were going to be used as raw materials for furniture manufacturing.

The BOC said that eight more containers containing garbage could have entered the country if government officials failed to discover the initial shipments. The additional shipments could have earned Verde Soko an additional US$25 million (more than PHP1.315 billion).

John Simon, the Port Collector at the MICT, said in a statement that the waste will be sent back to South Korea “provided that all regulatory requirements are readily available”.

This is not the first time that the Philippines became a dumping ground for imported waste. In June to Aug. 2013, 50 container vans containing recyclable plastic materials were sent to the Manila International Container Port (MICP) by an Ontario, Canada-based export company. This was later followed by 48 container vans containing garbage that arrived in Dec. 2013 to Jan. 2014, reported Rappler.

At present, Canada’s garbage remains in the country, although the BOC said it has formed technical working groups to find a solution to the issue.