MY PLAGUE series 1 and 2 were about floods geographical assessment. Series 3 was about landscape restoration, and 4 on drainage. Meanwhile, allow me to skip series 5 on chocolate rivers and environmental destruction and jump to discuss the issue of the day: Series #6 Basura and the rice crisis.
We are plagued by tons of stinking garbage on the streets, public places and the like when we could have segregated and recycled plastics, bottles or cans for good use like fuel, home construction materials or even flood control dikes or water catchment materials. We can compost all the organic materials for quality and cheap green fertilizer or even use worms for vermiculture at home or on a large scale to ensure fresh healthy organic food products in cans and bins. Yet, we are also hungry and silly about “chili” reportedly worth P1,000 per kilo in Metro Manila or suffer terrible shortage of rice due for importation while traders hoard the same in giant bodegas while the people struggle to even buy a kilo to feed the family. Why oh why are these happening in an agricultural country like the Philippines?
Stinking basura!
During the time of Mayor Borja down to Mayor Magtajas, the city was regarded as one of the cleanest in the country. Yet, as the population of the city grew to over a million, the city was helplessly relying on private contractors during the time of Mayor Dongkoy Emano and the present Mayor Oscar Moreno. I will not dwell on the question of regularity and the crony nature of these privatized contracts but on the dismal performance even as reality compels us to submit that accountability should fall on the government and not on the contractors when the efficiency is terrible and when the cost of service is questionable.
In Vancouver, Canada during the 2014 CDO International Tapok gathering, we were privileged to be granted a request to allow public officials from CDO headed by then Mayor Oscar Moreno and Congressman Rufus Rodriguez to be briefed on the waste management and segregation in the city from the household level. Here, we segregate garbage on categories labelled receptacles garbage, organic waste, plastics and cans, bottles and papers, and cartoons. One runs the risk of uncollected garbage and fines for noncompliance. Germany has areas where mandatory home composting and gardening is required. Japan, is more meticulous with more categories of segregation. Every segregated material is recycled or composted and the composted material is sold cheap or given free to some community gardens.
In Cagayan de Oro, we have problems not only with segregation but also with dumping garbage and burning in stinking landfills causing air and water pollution. The worst part is uncollected garbage dumped on the streets which are not only ugly, filthy and unhealthy but also causing clogged up canals worsening the flood problem. Thus, there is no reason why the government should not push through with solving this problem. Barangay Gusa Kapitan Marlo Tabac was able to do waste segregation in Gusa during his tenure as Barangay kagawad but it seems the program lost steam during the present Moreno administration.
Organic gardening
The key to urban waste management is segregation. Yet, the gold that comes out of our organic wastes is the solution to the problem of waste and food security itself. Last year, I started planting vegetables and staple crops in our backyard garden in Vancouver. Yet, it cost me about 80-90 sacks of organic soil and still counting. Thus, I began collecting falling leaves in the fall of last year, about 35 sacks. I incorporated it in the garden soil and significantly increased our soil build up.
I came to start with composting our kitchen waste. It was difficult burying it on trenches because the raccoons would come to dig it. I started composting in waste bins but my source of carbon from leaves to help in the composting process were already exhausted. So I started shredding old free newspapers but had a problem with anaerobic decomposition which was very odorous. I remedied it with proper drainage and ventilation in the containers and increased the carbon content while minimizing the moisture.
It was successful since then. I also bought initially a pound of wigglers worms for fast vermicomposting using the same shredded papers and fibers extracted from juicing vegetables and fruits and mixed it up with coffee grinds and egg shells.
I used the same garbage bins of about 3X 2.5 X 3 feet as my compost bin for the worms and other kitchen wastes such as fruits and vegetables. Such a strategy should work in cities while the government can support the same for households and on a large scale by starting with waste segregation on the household level and resupplying the same organic composts to residents for free or at low cost such that garbage and hunger can be solved.
Recycling plastics, bottles and cans
There had been numerous technological successes published and posted on TV, newspapers, You Tube and social media about the use of plastics for bricks and piles to build houses, control floods and impound water, reproduction of fuel, and other uses but we are still burning the same in unhealthy open dumps which only pollute the ground aquifer with poisonous waste. Political will is totally absent in the government.
In my case, I would use these waste as water catchment impounding barriers in the creeks in my small reforested area in Taguanao subject to piling using sacks, metal screens, a little sand and gravel and bamboo. I am confident that zero waste will be achieved even for non-biodegradable materials even on the household level. In fact, plastic bottles are already utilized for gardening purposes. Thus, food security and waste management can be achieved if there is the political and personal will and know how.
Rice crisis
Rice is a problem emanating from scarce water sources due to the destruction of our watersheds, the absence of irrigation, the manipulation of traders on a large scale with the direct incompetence of government planners. On small scale farming, rice prices is manipulated by traders via lending, buying and hoarding the same for the highest possible price.
The government should have intervened through the Department of Agriculture by providing the program and support to farmers, the Land Bank to finance, and the NFA to buy, sell, and assure fair market prices. It entails a program and a budget to build our food security infrastructure but sadly our eyes are looking into industrial agriculture and “Build Build Build” infrastructure programs to satisfy the needs of lenders like China who at the same time corners the contracts for those projects in a subtle debt trap.
We want to solve our food security problem? Then let us put the money where our mouth is. We are still far from real on this account. Thus we threatened traders and cartels as if they are in control of the business of the government themselves in the past and in the present. all this time we blame each other but we never addressed the issue with the real solutions necessary to make the difference.
Go just do it and make use of waste on our own household level. We can plant kamote and kalamunggay and the garbage and food crisis can end with simple doable solutions. Better still, we can get back to the countryside and build our own food forest gardens. It is clean, healthy and environmentally friendly. Let's grow our own organic food and make waste the solution to the problem itself.