El Nido Bans Single-Use Plastic and Package Tours

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The municipality of El Nido is now fighting back against tourism-driven pollution not only by banning single-use plastics, but also by preventing large number of tourists from visiting the island.

To ramp it up, the local government has increased the payment required to visit El Nido’s small and big lagoons. The goal is to decrease the tourists from visiting these spots and lessen the cost of their environmental damage.

Learning from Boracay

Government officials in El Nido are very much aware of what happened to Boracay. Due to severe environmental problems, the popular tourist destination was closed by the government for six months in order to rehabilitate it. The island was reopened only this October. Their fear is that El Nido is going down the same path if steps to protect the island are not taken.

Mayor Nieves Cabunalda Rosento of El Nido has been firm in implementing her anti-plastic rules. According to local reports, she has issued 10,000-peso fines on the spot to tourist guides, market vendors, and basically anyone who is caught carrying or using single-use plastics.

UN Programme Officer for Marine Litter Heidi Savelli-Soderberg commends the banning of single-use plastic, but she thinks that it shouldn’t stop there.

“Banning various types of unnecessary single-use plastic items can be an important first step in the fight against plastic pollution,” she said.

“But to solve the problem of plastic pollution in the long-term… we need to completely change the way we think. We need to stop treating plastic as something we can just throw away, and start treating it as a material that has actual value,” she added.

Savelli-Soderberg recognizes that efforts to preserve and rehabilitate El Nido might hinder its tourism, which is a major source of employment. But the solutions, she argues, should be done “in consultation with all relevant stakeholders, and give industries, including tourism, upon which many coastal regions rely, time to adapt.”