THE Cagayan de Oro City Local Environment and Natural Resources Office (Clenro) is turning to worms, "aliwate," or "wati" in the local dialect, to help rehabilitate the old dump site at Zayas, Carmen village.
Clenro chief Edwin Dael said the City Government bought one and a half kilo of African night crawlers from the Manresa farm which were then released to the old landfill on Friday, June 30, to help the garbage composting process.
Dael said, according to research, African night crawlers feed on decomposing matter.
African worms feed on mostly anything, like fruit and vegetable waste, egg shells, coffee grounds, tree leaves, cardboard, garden waste, starchy foods such as pasta, potatoes and rice grains, aged animal manure, and commercial worm food.
"It's the best way to achieve successful composting, they have big appetite making them ideal for the compost bin," he said.
Dael said the closure is now 80 percent complete and will be totally closed and rehabilitated before the year ends.
The Ecological Solid Waste Management Division (ESWMD) of Clenro also noted an improvement of the garbage collection.
He said they expected the amount of garbage dumped at the new engineered landfill in Pagalungan village from April to June at about 30,000 cubic meters but only about 26,000 cubic meters has been dumped for the same period.
The Clenro chief said the 4,000 cubic meter reduction is attributed to the compliance of some village in the city's segregation policy.
To further improve the collection, the Clenro is set to launch the search for the cleanest barangay in the city.
"This is part of our campaign for a cleaner Cagayan de Oro, urging barangays to clean up and segregate as we strive to achieve a zero waste collection in the city especially that we just transferred to a new landfill," he said.
Two villages will be chosen, for the numbered village category and for the suburban village category, with P150,000 and P250,000 cash prize, respectively.