BANTAY Dagat volunteers in 32 coastal areas of the 182 barangays of Davao City gathered a total of 3,000 sacks of plastic bottles, plastic bags, discarded rubber tires, plastic sacks, and discarded slippers during their cleanup last May 2018.
The greatest volume was collected from Barangay 23-C. While Paul Bermejo, officer-in-charge of the Ancillary Services Unit (ASU), said that not all the garbage in Barangay 23-C were thrown by its residents as some were just brought in by the sea, this does not excuse the fact that the residents just let these plastics be.
Of course the plastics filling up the shores are the residents not just disposing their garbage everywhere but also not minding that garbage is already piling up in their surroundings.
What if each resident cleans up every day, as part of their civic duty in living by the sea, and dispose of these garbage properly. Properly, meaning, these are brought out to the garbage bins properly segregated for the garbage truck to pick up.
And no, hiding these under the sand doesn't work.
Sad to say, that is a practice in those coastal barangays and is among the reasons why garbage can be extracted even deep in the sand. They were not just brought in by the tide and buried by nature, many times over, it's humans who bury these as well.
Just go to the inhabited areas along Times Beach in the morning when residents who maintain some huts for beachgoers are still cleaning up after the night's drinking sprees and videokes, and observe the helpers or residents as they sweep the garbage into dustpans. You'd see several of them having a dug up pit on the beach where they will throw the garbage they collected and cover these with sand. Thus, garbage can no longer be seen... until the next high tide comes.
We have seen how plastics have killed marine life, from the biggest whales and dolphins to the rare sea turtles. We've seen them all die on our shores. While, yes, like the residents of Barangay 23-C, we are not responsible for all the waste that end up in the sea, the mere fact that we did not segregate and properly dispose of non-biodegradable wastes makes us equally responsible, wherever these plastics may end up in.