Mati City joins Int’l Coastal Cleanup Day 2018

Contributed photo.
Contributed photo.

WITH much concern on the rising solid waste problem globally, the City Government of Mati took part in celebrating the International Coastal Cleanup Day on September 15 through its Solid Waste Integrated Management (Swim) program.

Some 2,000 individuals composed of coastal residents, students, volunteers, and government employees participated in the advocacy campaign activities of Swim: Plogging, Cleanup Drive and Coastal Clean-Up

Plogging, the activity joined mostly by students last Saturday, is a term for jogging while picking up garbage. The coastal cleanup, on the other hand, was conducted in most of its coastal barangays of the city. While the Cleanup Drive was conducted in Mati creek, Mabua creek, and Mati public market.

Swim coordinator Tanya Rabat-Tan told SunStar Davao in an interview that these advocacy campaign activities are aimed to increase level of awareness of the community on the looming problem of improper solid waste management.

“This is the second year the City of Mati is participating for this international event. For this year, we have a bigger activity because apart from the simultaneous coastal cleanup for our coastal barangays, we have plogging and cleanup drive in different areas in the city thus involving more stakeholders,” she said.

Last Saturday, a jingle campaign on solid waste management entitled “Solusyon” and Swim mascot were also launched during a program at the Mati Park and Baywalk.

“The more involved in this campaign, the bigger the impact. Our mayor (Carlo Rabat) also emphasized that he wanted a massive campaign on the issue.

Aware that a cleanup drive will not solve the whole problem, Tan said, they are going around the community especially in the coastal areas to educate and inform the public, thereby instilling discipline on the proper solid waste management.

As a result, the participants collected 140 trash bags with an estimated weight of 1,245.3 kilograms.

These wastes are collected the plogging activity, cleanup drive and coastal cleaning from 11 barangays that participated. Four other coastal brgys were not able to participate due to big waves because of Typhoon Ompong. Mati City has a total of 16 coastal barangays.

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