Do you know the most common type of plastic litter identified in most environmental surveys conducted in the Philippines?
Is there any information on plastics pollution in your province?
Are you looking for published studies on plastics and plastics pollution?
What if there was one website that can provide all this information?
Introducing the PlastiCount Pilipinas Portal, a comprehensive website that showcases compiled plastics pollution data from several studies in the country in a visual and interactive way. The portal features a map with relevant plastics data gathered from contributing studies from 2012-2022 conducted in 128 sampling stations on aquatic habitats and adjacent land-water transition zones across 11 provinces in the Philippines. It is the first-of-its-kind map in the Philippines and will be useful not just for researchers, but for teachers, students, policy makers, monitoring agencies, and even the general public in disseminating information about plastics pollution due to its availability, accessibility, and adaptability.
Availability
Over the past few years and even the past decade, there have already been studies conducted regarding plastic pollution in the country. However, a lot of these data are not readily available to people outside the scientific community. The PlastiCount Pilipinas Portal provides a list of studies and publications about plastic pollution. Additionally, the information available in the website, particularly those about the amount of plastic pollution in specific areas, has already been processed and categorized per type of plastic and per province, which makes it simpler to understand and visualize. You can easily learn information relevant to you about your specific area or province or the country in general.
Accessibility
As mentioned earlier, the website provides a database for plastics research. However, this not only benefits end-users of information, but also scientists and researchers currently working on plastics research. The website presents what kind of data is available, where studies have been conducted and what kinds of research have already been done. Conversely, it can also show what data is still missing, where there are gaps in studies and research and what other research objectives can be pursued in the future. Those who want to conduct plastic research can contribute their research and form collaborations with other researchers to further update and refine the existing data at hand. Imagine all this information can be gleaned in just one place!
Adaptability
True to its objective, the PlastiCount Pilipinas Portal currently specializes in quantifying, synthesizing, and visualizing available plastics pollution data. However, in time, this can prove to be so much more. Thinking long-term, it shall serve as a monitoring platform to know if we are actually making headway in the fight against plastic pollution. Moreover, it can serve a database about all kinds of plastics research in the country, and not just plastics pollution. More importantly, the website can be a bridge to make plastics research more targeted and collaborative to further address the gaps in our data and hopefully be more effective in addressing the plastics pollution problem.
This website launch is just a piece of the bigger picture of what PlastiCount Pilipinas hopes to achieve, but information-sharing and nationwide-collaboration of all relevant stakeholders are paramount to the success of the project. PlastiCount Pilipinas is a project funded by the Department of Science and Technology Grants-in-Aid (DOST GIA) monitored by Philippine Council for Industry, Environment and Emerging Technology Research and Development Council (PCIEERD) through the JST-UKRI-DOST Science and Technology and Action Nexus for Development (STAND) Framework in collaboration with Kyushu University and Japan Science and Technology Ministry (Japan), University of East Anglia and United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UK), and Swinburne University of Technology (Malaysia). If you want to know more about PlastiCount Pilipinas, or just want to know more about the state of plastics pollution in the country, check out http://plasticount.ph to learn more.
