There’s a dispute brewing between Canada and the Philippines. Officials from the Philippines accuse Canada and other wealthy Western nations of shipping their garbage there and supposing that depositing it halfway around the world gives them the right to pretend it doesn’t stink.

The Filipinos have had their fill of haughty western attitudes. On Friday the Southeast Asian country shipped 69 containers of what its officials called illegally transported garbage back to Canada.

Administrator Wilma Eisma of Subic Bay freeport said the tons of garbage were loaded overnight on the container ship M/V Bavaria, which left on a 20-day journey to the Canadian port city of Vancouver, ending what Eisma called a “sordid chapter in our history.”

The return of the garbage removes a six-year thorn in relations between the two countries, especially under President Rodrigo Duterte, a temperamental nationalist leader who took office in mid-2016. Duterte has resented international criticism, including by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, of his bloody crackdown on illegal drugs that has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead.

Officials previously said the trash was transported to the Philippines in 103 containers in 2013 and 2014, and falsely declared as recyclable plastic scraps. Some of it has been disposed of, including in a landfill, leaving 69 containers of electrical and household waste, including used diapers, rotting in two Philippine ports.

Trudeau has said the trash was shipped there originally in a private commercial transaction.

“I think the message that we’re sending to the world is that we will not be a pushover and, moreover, that the president is really somebody to reckon with,” Eisma told The Associated Press.

For Western Pennsylvania, there’s a more urgent message, one that we ignore at our own peril.

As collective beneficiaries of the Marcellus Shale gas deposits, we are investing in a massive ethane cracker plant that is now being built in Beaver County. The plant will convert natural gas into plastics and other chemical solids for an array of industrial and manufacturing applications. The $6 billion project will bring jobs, revenue and prosperity to the region for many decades.

It will also generate products that will present environmental challenges — products that will be difficult to dispose of, recycle or reuse — in other words, potential containersful of trash on a ship headed back home after being rejected by some distant overseas port.

The international incident represents one way governments might handle such disputes. Another proposal, the U.S. New Green Deal, would approach environment and energy as a matter of social justice/social equality. The concept, while far from clearly defined yet, sounds prohibitively costly and intrusive, not to mention socialistic.

And yet, the handwriting is on the wall. Months ago, China ceased accepting glass, plastics and other recyclables from the United States, leaving waste disposal companies scrambling to find alternative disposal methods. The alternatives cost the companies more, which means they will cost their customers more.

Those who generate petrochemical-based plastics and related materials — including us soon — need to develop practical ways to recycle, reuse, biodegrade and otherwise dispose of these materials. Incentives should be put in place to encourage the brightest minds to work on these problems now.