ONE of the incentives for doing proper waste management is money. Recyclable materials can be exchanged for cash. May pera sa basura, ika nga. In spite of this, it seems only a few are encouraged to do segregation and recycling.

So the pera sa basura concept was repackaged and reintroduced in a manner that is more appealing to common folks. The “food for garbage” approach -- much like the Food For Work program -- was one of those variations.

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Way back in 2001, the Metro manila Development Authority (MMDA) started a program called Basura Palit Bigas. Recyclable materials can be exchanged with rice. As an example, 40 empty aluminum softdrink cans be bartered with rice.

This idea is certainly not unique to the Philippines. In Caracas Venezuela, there was a similar scheme implemented in 2003. It’s called the “Big Swap” program where recyclable wastes are exchanged for sugar, rice, beans, and canned sardines.

The MMDA program died a natural death. But where others failed, some succeeded. Take the case of a poor town in Leyte. According to a story which appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the town of Tabon-Tabon successfully implemented and improved yet another modification of the Pera sa Basura scheme.

In this 5th Class municipality, plastic waste is a legal tender. It is used to pay for transactions in government like marriage licenses, permits, and use of ambulance. It was even used to pay for seats in the pay-per-view boxing match of Pacquiao and Hatton.

Something in the story though puzzles me. According to the report, the price of a kilo of plastic is P300 and three kilos amount to P1,000. The current market price of a kilo of PET or HDPE, the most saleable plastics, is only between P15 to P25.

Is the town subsidizing it? It’s only a 5th class municipality, so does it have the money to do that? Assuming the town recovers the subsidy through their savings on hauling expenses and tipping fee, the 1,000 percent increase in buying price is still unexplainable from an economic point of view.

Ano kaya ang sikreto ni Mayor?

In the corporate setting, Pera Sa Basura is done through the Industrial Waste Exchange Program or IWEP. This system was pioneered by the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE) and I was fortunate to be involved in the initial stages of its implementation.

The concept is simple. The waste of one company can be the raw material of another. One of the most successful waste-exchange deals under the IWEP is the exchange of paper waste for tissue and bondpaper.

Recently, the Federation of Philippine Industries (FPI), the biggest group of manufacturing companies in the Philippines, initiated the same project. I received an email about the plan with an accompanying survey form to gather baseline data on wastes being used or generated in the facilities of FPI members.