LET this be the cleanest Sinulog ever.
The Sinulog Festival in Cebu City won as the “Best Festival in the Philippines” during the first Choose Philippines Award held last December 2016.
Many factors have been attributed to this distinction: Cebuanos’ piety, hospitality, and cultural richness.
Adding to the accolades should be the festival’s track record in waste management during and after the festivities.
Cebu can do better this year in demonstrating how a major public event can generate among Cebuanos and visitors ecological consciousness.
Green challenge
The latest recognition of Cebu’s tourism industry challenges stakeholders to continue excelling.
To improve tourism in Cebu, stakeholders have singled out shortcomings, such as lack of infrastructure, improvement of services, and distribution of tourism benefits at the grassroots.
The environmental impact of tourism is a pressing priority, too.
The Sinulog Festival has grown over the decades in terms of the size of the crowds, the number and variety of contingents, and the lucrativeness of commercial spin-offs of the religious and cultural festival.
Unfortunately, trash left on the streets still tarnishes the Sinulog.
In 2009, an estimated audience of 2.8 million watched the Sinulog grand parade and left 270 tons of garbage. The Cebu City Department of Public Services (DPS) deployed 500 street cleaners, 22 garbage trucks, and four
payloaders to haul the garbage to the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in 2009.
In 2016, the trash haul plunged to 110 tons, lower than the 197 tons collected in 2015, reported Sun.Star Cebu’s Razel V. Cuizon on Jan. 19, 2016.
This trend of improving green consciousness is credited to the public’s receptivity to the information campaign on the clean-up drive and the enforcement of the city’s environmental laws.
Last year, the Cebu City Environmental and Sanitation Enforcement Team (Ceset) apprehended 938 persons, who were charged a P500 fine for violating city ordinances prohibiting littering, smoking and urinating in public places during the Sinulog grand parade.
Share the stake
Due to the pressure to clear the streets after the Sinulog grand parade in time for Monday morning traffic, the city’s street cleaners no longer segregate the garbage left after Sinulog festivities. Crowds in major parts of the Sinulog parade route rarely disperse until after Sunday midnight. Rowdy drunks and broken bottles littering the streets pose more serious impediments to street cleaners.
However, the DPS inventory of Sinulog waste shows that the bulk are plastic bags, disposable water containers, food wrapping, and fruit peels. This is trash that could have been easily segregated and disposed of by the public, reducing the city’s clean-up crew to collecting the garbage and hauling this to Inayawan.
There is a noticeable lack of garbage bins along the Sinulog procession/parade route. If the Roman Catholic church and leaders can get families and businessmen to contribute or volunteer for the installation of sound systems to broadcast the Sto. Niño novena or Sinulog music, can it also not mobilize the civic-spirited to position trash receptacles to supplement government resources to enable the public to segregate and responsibly dispose of trash?
The success of the church and civil society in ecological responsibility has already significantly reduced the once popular practice of releasing balloons with petitions, which pose risks to marine animals when the balloons deflate and end in the sea.
Recyclables like disposable water bottles are also collected by persons for selling. By clearing the streets of these trash, which pose a risk to the disabled or families pushing prams with infants, these informal trash collectors perform an essential role in the Sinulog clean-up drive.
However, every citizen must also participate. Garbage can be stored in backpacks and properly disposed later.
Food vendors must have receptacles for fruit peel or wrapping.
Whether out of piety for the Holy Infant or in celebration of Filipino culture, Sinulog devotees and revelers must see that being responsible in one’s consumption and disposal of waste is in keeping with the complete Sinulog experience.