Author Topic: Stress on Garbage Collection in the Philippines  (Read 814 times)

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Stress on Garbage Collection in the Philippines
« on: June 22, 2012, 06:53:43 AM »
by PNA

The government targets reducing stress on garbage collection and disposal while promoting solid waste management by mobilizing public elementary and high school enrollees as agents of waste diversion so trash can be increasingly reused and recycled, believing such strategy will help address the country's projected 40 percent rise in waste generation during the next decade.

Under the National Ecosavers Program (NEP), which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and its partners will implement, the enrollees can help promote waste diversion by collecting recyclable garbage materials from their homes and elsewhere, then bringing these to their respective schools for pick-up by accredited junk shops and recyclers.

The enrollees will earn from such effort credit points they can either use to have their own bank savings accounts or later exchange for basic commodities.

"DENR is allocating as NEP seed money some P50 million that the Department of Budget and Management approved for our solid waste management (SWM) bid," Environment chief Ramon Paje said when the agency and its partners inked in Metro Manila on Thursday noon the memorandum of agreement for this program.

The agency's partners are the Department of Education (DepEd), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and non-government organization Galing Pook Foundation (GPF).

Such partners will initially implement NEP for two years in Metro Manila's 517 public elementary schools and 246 public high schools.

"We prioritized Metro Manila for already having an existing recycling network that'll be the enrollees' market," NEP consultant Vener Garcia said on the signing ceremony's side.

He also said Metro Manila is a high-impact region so NEP's success here can move other areas in the country to adapt SWM.

Metro Manila's public elementary and high schools have a combined population of nearly two million enrollees for school year 2012-2013.

Authorities estimated each enrollee can collect about half a kilogram of recyclable garbage daily, enabling them to collectively turn over about 95 tons of trash per day.

Such volume is equivalent to the daily load of around 23 10-wheeler trucks, noted DENR planning assistant secretary Michelle Angelica Go.

"That's how much garbage NEP can capture," she said during the signing ceremony.

NEP's output can help raise waste diversion rate by at least 40 percent, she noted.

She also said NEP can help improve waste collection efficiency by over 70 percent.

The program likewise allows enrollees concerned to collect organic waste to be composted for various greening projects.

For NEP, she said DENR will implement this program as well as provide funding, technical and information dissemination support.

DepEd will implement NEP at the school level.

"We long to continue contributing solutions to our problems - waste materials become waste if we don't know how to reuse and recycle these," DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro said during the event.

DILG will assist in implementing NEP at the local government unit level and provide counterpart resources for this program.

"This is a way of mobilizing communities for the environment, a campaign for good governance and a concrete means of addressing our Manila Bay clean-up commitment to the Supreme Court," DILG Undersecretary Austere Panadero said during the agreement's signing.

He noted NEP is also a way of preparing for possible disasters linked to environmental degradation due to garbage pollution and other factors.

MMDA will assist in NEP's Metro Manila-wide implementation, help educate people about SWM and provide counterpart resources for the program as well.

"We assure our part in supporting NEP," MMDA SWM Office Director Alexander Umagat said during the event.

GPF committed sharing best SWM practices nationwide for possible replication around the country.

"NEP will have our support," GPF chairperson Nieves Confesor assured during the event.

Garcia said signatories to the agreement will monitor and assess NEP's progress in Metro Manila.

Results of such activities will help the signatories plan NEP's future direction, he noted.

Earlier, he said NEP builds upon the SWM program of Marikina City.

"We wanted that program scaled up so more communities can have their respective SWM efforts," he said.

He believes such scaling up is possible as previous studies show about 45 percent of garbage nationwide can be recycled.

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