AFTER a night of New Year celebrations, not a few woke up the morning after be in greeted with trash carpeting the streets, such as what happened in Bacolod City.
Across the country, many bureaucrats and politicians remain fixated with garbage disposal through landfills and even waste incinerators instead of implementing robust ecological solid waste management programs anchored on waste prevention, reduction, separation at source, reuse, recycling and composting. Why?
Republic Act (RA) 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, directs the closure of open and controlled dumpsites. But instead of shutting down, cleaning up and decontaminating perilous dumpsites, illegal waste disposal facilities continue to exist in total violation of the law.
RA 9003 further directs the establishment of materials recovery facilities (MRFs), also known as ecology centers, in every barangay or cluster of barangays to promote and support waste prevention and reduction at grassroots level. To eradicate dependence on costly garbage disposal facilities, authorities can carry out community-driven and socially inclusive zero waste resource management programs to reduce the volume and toxicity of garbage and divert reusable, recyclable and compostable materials away from cement kilns, incinerators, landfills and dumpsites.
Open and controlled dumpsites are ecological time bombs which, if not given priority attention, will result to tragedy of immeasurable magnitude. Remember the Payatas dumpsite tragedy in Quezon City in 2000? An avalanche of garbage collapsed due to incessant rains brought about by typhoons “Edeng” and “Ditang” burying hundreds of residents alive and killing over 300 women, men and children.
Sadly, the misfortune that shocked our nation and the world was apparently not enough to move us into embracing real solutions to the persistent garbage crisis.
The lessons of Payatas remain relevant today as we continue to wrestle with our burgeoning waste problems.
