EditorialThe missing MRFs

The missing MRFs

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As one of our news reports states, only 10 percent of the 557 barangays in Negros Oriental have a functional Materials Recovery Facility.

An MRF is a space designed to be a repository of recyclable materials that can be processed for proper waste disposal.

Only 55 barangays in the Province have an MRF, and most of them are in Bayawan City. The cities of Bais and Canlaon are also reporting some success in this urgent solution, as they even have sanitary landfills.

This leaves practically the other 22 local government units with close to nothing!

This situation is bad for our sanitation needs, especially in Dumaguete City, where we continue to operate an outlawed open dumpsite. We collectively produce tons of garbage, and our City dumpsite is exploding at the seams.

We don’t seem to know what to do with it as our City officials have tried to find alternative dumpsites but nobody wants to hold on to our garbage.

There is a law to ensure the functional and sustainable solid waste management program, which is Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. This law has been with us for 20 years now, but from what we see, this law might just have been passed yesterday.

Our garbage output, however, could effectively be reduced if we had MRFs in every barangay in Negros Oriental.

Which means, things like cola plastic bottles, ice cream containers, inoperable appliances and other recyclable materials don’t anymore end up at the dumpsite. These should be collected by the barangays, and sorted out in the MRF.

Imposing the P1,000 penalty on violators of RA 9003 is a chicken & egg thing, for the City has no moral footing to enforce the law that it also violates.

The garbage problem will just have to be solved in small bites. We will have to encourage garbage segregation at source, from each of our homes. Or give incentives to those who turn in recyclable materials.

There’s still hope. Especially if each of us would consume less that comes from plastic, if we reuse and recycle, and if we start today.

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