[ Manila Bulletin Online ] November 8, 2008
By CEASAR M. PERANTE
SANTIAGO CITY – The environment and natural resources office of Santiago City launched the other day a door-to-door zero-waste campaign in the city’s 23 suburban villages.
Santiago City Environment Officer Orlando Tesoro said the old campaign has been revised because the city government’s earlier efforts at zero waste failed.
In an effort to solve the problem, Santiago City Mayor Amelita Navarro ordered the launching of a house-to-house information drive as well in all schools to educate everyone on the need for proper disposal of garbage.
"It seems that our previous campaign on waste segregation fell on deaf ear as we noted that while homeowners put their trash in garbage bags, they did not segregate the biodegradable from the non-biodegradable," Tesoro said.
Tesoro said that the disregard of waste-disposal guidelines and the city’s environmental ordinances especially by the people at the city public market doomed the earlier drive.
"The common violation is the non-segregation of biodegradable from the degradable waste, and this made difficult the classification of the waste by our garbage collectors. Worst, those who do not have trash bags, simply throw their garbage into sewerage canals," Tesoro lamented.
"Our long-time request for systematic waste segregation was ignored by most of the residents, and this is the reason our undermanned garbage collection units needed more than three times the required time to collect and dispose the waste," Tesoro said.
The tons of biodegradable garbage collected daily from 23 of the city’s 37 villages are converted into organic fertilizer for the city’s 7,700-hectare rice farms.
Equipped with four composting cylinders, one screener and one hammer mill, the material recovery facility (MRF) located at the city environment and natural resources office (CENRO) in Barangay Victory Norte, converts the organic waste into organic fertilizer.
The organic fertilizers from waste recycling are distributed the city agriculture office to the schools and farmers.
Since the launching of the "quick-turnaround" rice planting program in the city, the participating farmers have been given subsidized organic fertilizers by the city government.
