THE General Services Office (GSO) of Baguio City Hall issued an advisory on Monday, July 22, to clarify how barangays should dispose of biodegradable waste for collection.
“Each barangay should provide a sack at their collection points as a common collection receptacle of biodegradable waste,” the memo reads.
Some residents have been complaining of non-collection of biodegradable waste in selected barangays for three weeks now and are at a loss on how to dispose of the waste.
“Biodegradable waste should be poured into the sack with plastic containers removed to ensure that there will be no mixing of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste,” the GSO memo adds.
In the first day of July, GSO stopped collection including processing of biodegradable waste at the Irisan dumpsite upon orders of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Undersecretary Benny Antiporda.
The order was reversed the next day with assurance from Mayor Benjamin Magalong on compliance to environment rules.
The GSO memo said there is no order stopping collection of biodegradable waste.
A backlog of 30,000 metric tons of unprocessed waste at the Irisan dumpsite to be converted to compost which should be processed by contractor, Rapport Innovations by the end of the month when machines have been promised to be up and running.
The ERS machines have been defective since 2014 as reported to him by engineers in charge at the Irisan site but has surprisingly not been repaired nor reported, spraying of inoculant for the waste pile has also halted.