How reused plastic bottles help drive away flies, keep taxi drivers honest in Manila
Also known as Not Another Newsletter: The PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) Bottle edition
Insert a lengthy piece of foil through the opening of an empty PET bottle. Fill it up with water. Screw on the bottle cap, close tightly, and place the whole set-up on the dinner table.
Congratulations — You just assembled a tool to drive away those pesky houseflies, especially useful during breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The reflection of light on the foil is supposed to ward them off, a waitress in an open-air San Fernando, Pampanga restaurant told me when I asked her about the conversation piece on our table.
Her explanation is not exactly the stuff of superstition.
In public markets across Asia, similar contraptions such as shiny water bags and reflective discs are used to drive flies away, Singapore’s Rentokil said on its website.1
But these may not be effective enough, the pest control company added.
“Although water bags and reflective discs may temporarily discourage some flies from hanging around…, some other flies may get past this weak line of defense,” Rentokil said.
However arguably unsophisticated, the makeshift set up is good enough for me.
Sure, some quick ones may have managed to land on no-fly zones on our table. But they hardly ruined our brunch during this recent All Saints’ Day weekend.
After all, one homemade pest control device is one less PET bottle headed for the landfill.
And because only a tiny portion of these plastic containers end up being recycled, most of them contribute to ocean pollution and in one case, even caused the death of a Southern Royal Albatross in June 2020.2
These plastic bottles — most used only once — aren't only containers for drinks and detergent.
Empty discards also serve as fuel storage which, in turn, help maintain respect and trust between taxicab drivers who are mag-karelyebo (partners who drive the same car but on different shifts).
Based on current practices, a driver is expected to end his shift on time (especially if his schedule lasts for 24 hours).
By the end of his working day, he is also duty-bound to turn over to his partner a cab that has been newly-washed, thoroughly cleaned, and, most crucially, filled up with a full tank of gas.
Anything less than the required minimum would likely fuel mistrust and tension between the two drivers, who, to begin with, didn't usually start out as BFFs.
If the driver on the new shift isn't confident about the amount of gas in the cab, he can choose to pour the contents of his PET bottle into the tank. If he manages to empty it, the driver whose shift just ended is required to bring the cab to the nearest gas station, fill the tank up to the brim, and make it right for everyone.
In short, the PET bottle helps avoid cheating between taxicab drivers who have different shifts.
Again, in this case, a PET bottle reused is a PET bottle saved from the landfill and from ocean pollution. Unfortunately, these methods are not enough to address the problem. Consider the following:
In Bacolod, informal settlers and street sweepers helped collect more than 8000 kilos of PET bottles for recycling in October 2024 as part of the city’s Masskara festival.3 In Taguig City, the government funded a start-up that will develop a vendo machine for accepting PET bottles and tin cans in exchange for either cash, a WiFi connection, access to a cellphone charging station, and “points that can be redeemed for goods from partner-retailers.”4 In Manila, international ocean conservation group Oceana said that the future of Coca-Cola Philippines’ returnable bottle packaging system was “at risk” after the company was acquired by Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Aboitiz Equity Ventures.5 “Coca-Cola has failed in the Philippines to prioritize or promote reusable packaging such as returnable bottles…” Oceana said, adding that “returnable bottles account for nearly 50% of all sales by Coca-Cola in the country.” Oceana in April 2022 cited the Coca-Cola company’s commitment “to increase the share of their products sold in refillable and reusable containers to 25% of everything it sells by volume by 2030.”6 Forty-one percent of Filipinos favored a ban on single-use plastic bottles for water while 47% expressed support for a same ban on plastic bottles for juices, a September 2019 survey commissioned by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (Philippines) said.7 A legal measure that requires large companies to recover a portion of plastic packaging they produce has lapsed into law in July 2022 after neither former president Rodrigo Duterte nor President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed it. Despite imposing penalties on companies that fail to comply, the Extended Producer Responsibility Law was opposed by environmental groups as it will still give them “an excuse to use more plastic as they are just required to recover…materials after their products are bought and consumed.”8 “The Philippines’ plastic bottle market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.6% over the next five years,” according to an August 2022 report that indicated its outlook for the years 2024 to 2030.9
For my day job I led a tour of Coca-Cola's PET bottle recycling plant in General Trias. The technology is there, but the logistics of collecting plastic bottles is one issue, and finding buyers for the recycled products (which are pellets, not bottles) is another.
That tour was mind-opening for another reason: I learned that Starbucks uses recycled PET material for their drinks, but as their cups are printed with the Starbucks logo, it makes them difficult to recycle, if not impossible. Coca-Cola shifted to clear bottles precisely for this reason, I'm told. I don't think Starbucks would have the incentive to muck with their branding for the environment...