Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 10) — Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro “Teddyboy” Locsin Jr. won’t accept any excuses — the reported trash from Australia will be shipped back.
“O, by the way, the garbage from Australia, that’s going back too. No, I don’t give a flying f••k that it is used in making cement. If that is so cement makers should formally import the ingredient so it goes nowhere but to their plants,” he tweeted on Monday.
The Environment Department previously explained the seven containers shipped from Australia and intercepted in Misamis Oriental were not filled with trash but processed engineered fuel, an alternative fuel source that could be used for manufacturing cement products.
Shipments of garbage from Australia, Hong Kong, and South Korea have cropped up amid the Philippines’ earlier row with Canada over nearly 2,500 tons of garbage illegally sent to the country in batches from 2013 to 2014.
President Rodrigo Duterte last month threatened to go to war with Canada if it failed to pull out the waste soon. Manila also recalled its diplomats in the North American country. The thorn in ties was finally removed when the garbage was shipped back to Canada on May 31, paving the way for the return of the Filipino diplomats to their posts.
Trash from Hong Kong was also shipped back last week.
