The Dumaguete garbage problem does seem daunting, as a recent visit by FENOr members to the decades-old City dump by the Banica River made clear.
A tall mountain of malodorous un-segregated garbage, and City trucks dumping more several times a day along with commercial establishment vehicles dumping theirs. Dozens of scavengers in the heat and filth, picking out recyclables, but still leaving much non-biodegradable waste that apparently have no re-sale value.
Last week, I spent a couple of days in U.P. Diliman seeing friends and old haunts. On one of our walks I asked to stop by what’s called the Task Force for Solid Waste Management (under the UP Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Community Affairs.) It’s a small and as usual, under-funded operation, but it can boast a certain effectiveness that’s worth noting.
Over a maybe-3000-sq. meter lot, there is an office, a shed for recyclables, a composting area, an area where vegetable seedlings are grown, some fruit trees and ornamental plants, and a duck-raising corral.
There is a staff of 13 persons including six collectors who go out everyday rain or shine (they are provided with raincoats) on their bicycle-driven metal carts to all the households on campus. These households bring out their garbage in different containers for paper, plastics, and kitchen and garden waste, which are put by the collectors in similarly-segregated bins in the cart.
The canteens, restaurants, dorms, commercial establishments, and university offices are responsible for bringing their own garbage to this SWM site.
The recyclables are collected by a private person for sale to junk dealers. As of now, the SWM office does not ask for a share of the proceeds from the sale of recyclables.
The compost produced is used for growing vegetable seedlings which are distributed to schools and other requesting parties. The SWM office does not charge for this.
The ornamentals can be requested for campus landscaping use. The ducks eat some of the kitchen waste, and eggs may be sold in the future.
The Task Force’s main objective is to remove garbage from the University grounds, households, and establishments. Generating funds from their various activities does not yet seem to be part of the program, although that would seem an obvious means to sustainability, also given the small funds the University provides which in turn, limits the Task Force’s operations.
Nothing is perfect, and the SWM office is aware of its inadequacies. Trash can still be seen around campus but it would appear that a significant percentage of solid waste is collected and managed.
Certainly, the faculty friends I stayed with, and their neighborhood all practiced segregation to comply with the collection system.
Here we are in Dumaguete, struggling with dilemmas around the centralized dump, and a collection system that hasn’t yet managed to devise something workable.
It seems that the idea is being revived for City dump trucks to refuse to collect non-segregated garbage. This is likely to have one very harmful effect: uncollected garbage will be burned, to the detriment of human health and worsening global warming.
Would it be worth considering de-centralizing SWM operations? Perhaps clusters of barangays could run a SWM operation together, and, if designed as a business, could create jobs and generate income for the barangay.
Not enough thinking is being done about solid waste management for the City. The fertilizer-from-garbage idea is fraught with risks of contaminants. The consumerist habits and practices of people and of commercial establishments that generate the huge and unmanageable volumes of trash are largely unaddressed, except for the new plastic bag ordinance which is good but limited in scope.
Much more needs to be done, with the resources for serious SWM measures constituting the usual test of political will.