The road to ecological hell is paved with good intentions

In a private community, Monterrazas Village in Tuding, Itogon, Benguet, homeowners/residents pay a 25,000-peso annual fee, and among the services provided by homeowners association is the regular collection of garbage twice a week.

Never had the chance to inquire where the collected waste are hauled to, and oddly, even after the municipal LGU announced that collection will be stopped indefinitely because of issues with the dump site, our garbage continued to be collected by the association's maintenance personnel, which just made me wonder even more where they haul the village's garbage to.

I couldn't help but notice though that in the last couple of weeks, we've had to endure the odor of burning plastic coming from neighboring areas. At different times of the day, tell-tale dark smoke could be seen wafting in different areas, and with it, the noxious odor.

Then the source came closer one day - just a few meters from our house, the caretakers of the village's clubhouse have been cleaning and burning tree and plant cuttings, dried leaves and cut grass along with whatever non-organic garbage they found in the area, mostly plastics. This time, thick, noxious smoke would enter our house and because there has been hardly any breeze, it would linger for hours. It got so bad that it was difficult to stay indoors in our own home, it hurt the eyes, the throat, the chest. The odor caused not only difficulty in breathing but dizziness too and we've had to turn on electric fans to clear the air - in vain though since the burning went on all day and sometimes into the night and the fans just couldn't keep up. It actually hurt my feelings, really, for how can one be so callous about the harm they're doing to other people?

So one afternoon, after of hours of trying to just grin and bear it, I walked up to where the burning was being done and talked to a man who was busy gathering even more plastic garbage and throwing them into the fire. I asked him if it was possible to at least not include the plastics. Though he agreed right there and then to put out the fire, a couple of hours later after sunset, the burning resumed.

We slept that night with the lingering smell of burning plastic.

The next day, I walked up to the head caretaker of the clubhouse and brought up my predicament with the plea for them not to burn plastics. I was surprised by his reaction - it seemed that because I and my family have been affected by their actions, have been enduring the noxious smoke for days already, and brought these to his attention, he got offended.

"Ano'ng magagawa ko e walang nagkokolekta ng basura namin?" I asked why doesn't the association collect their garbage, and he said that the conflict between the owners of the clubhouse and the association is none of my business - I didn't even know that the association did not own the clubhouse, much less that there was such a conflict between the two parties.

His stand was simple - he doesn't care if he's inconveniencing, endangering anyone, he will burn his plastic garbage because he has no other choice. Besides, he said, there are other people who do it. I told him that it seemed we've reached an impasse - he insists he has the right to burn plastics, and we can't continue to breathe in toxic smoke - I have no other choice but to bring it to the attention of the authorities, the police in particular, as burning plastic is not only a hazard, it is also illegal.

Go ahead, he said. So I did, and a few minutes later I was back at the clubhouse, three policemen with me this time.

I watched him defend his "right" to burn plastics to policemen, which made me realize: he really believes that there is nothing wrong with burning plastics. When I told him that my son, who was sick the past couple of days, couldn't properly get his much-needed rest because of the toxic fumes inside our house that came from his mound of burning plastic, he (and honestly I almost lost it and wanted to bury his face in his burning pile of plastic when I heard this) reply: "Ba't 'di mo dinala sa hospital anak mo?"

And I couldn't help but notice too how "petty" the policemen believed this issue was, even if essentially a crime was bring committed right in front of them - Section 49, Paragraph B of the law states that "Any person who violates Sec. 48, pars. 2 and 3 (The open burning of solid waste), shall, upon conviction be punished with a fine of not less than Three hundred pesos (P300.00) but not more than One thousand pesos (P1,000.00) or imprisonment of not less than one (1) day but to not more than fifteen (15) days, or both."

There lies the problem with RA 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Law of 2000. If, 18 years after it was enacted, towns, cities and provinces continue to fail to comply with the provisions of the law, and many of us still don't understand the implications of improper waste disposal or care about the harm we cause the environment and the people around us, then something's wrong somewhere.

Is it the law? RA 9003 is "AN ACT PROVIDING FOR AN ECOLOGICAL SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT PROGRAM, CREATING THE NECESSARY INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS AND INCENTIVES, DECLARING CERTAIN ACTS PROHIBITED AND PROVIDING PENALTIES, APPROPRIATING FUNDS THEREFOR, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES."

It is supposed to provide "a legal framework for the systematic comprehensive and ecological solid waste management program" for the country, which shall ensure the protection of public health and the environment."

It begs the questions...

Was the law a failure? 

The law clearly had only good intentions, and seemed to have provided ample time for LGUs and the public to comply - three years from the enactment of the law, LGUs must have been able to turn open dumps into controlled dumps, and in five years it must already have an Engineered Sanitary Landfill. It also provided for an education and information campaign enjoining the public and various government institutions to do their share: DECS, TESDA, CHED, DILG and PIA. Within a five-year period from the enactment of the law, RA 9003 said that "people must internalize the value of environmentally sound and sustainable solid waste disposal." But obviously, at least this caretaker couldn't still care less about the value of environmentally sound and sustainable waste disposal. Oh well.

How do you reach into the mind of the caretaker? How can you force, too, a family in an apartment building to start composting their biodegradable waste with no yard space? How does Baguio with hardly any land space available with the continuing residential population growth to build its own Engineered Sanitary Landfill? Sure, we don't need something that big if we implement zero waste efforts in every household, but that's easier said than done.

Or did we fail the law? 

In Baguio, city officials took the law for granted until the deadline for full compliance was up. Nothing significant was done until the LGU had no choice but to close the Irisan dumpsite or risk violating RA 9003 which resulted in mountains of garbage piling up in our streets. Only then did city hall started doing something, too little, too late. The public education and information campaign was a failure, which is the expected result if the ones doing the campaign themselves do not fully understand and appreciate the spirit of the law. Households were asked to segregate their garbage, only to see their segregated garbage dumped altogether in the same truck. If households segregated at all, for coming from simply having to take out all their garbage for collection, segregating them in to 3, 4 or was it 5?, different classifications which was what the LGU wanted them to do at first, wasn't easy.

Out in the streets roads, it's still commonplace to see plastic water bottles and wrappers being thrown out of car windows - cars, both local and from out of town. Pedestrians on their way home with their afternoon snacks don't find anything wrong with dumping their single use plastic cups and bags in the canal right in front of our house.

A lot of people believed then, and still do now, that waste disposal is solely the government's job and that all they need to do is take it out of their homes. And if it's not collected, it's not their problem anymore - they'll continue to dump even more garbage in various collection sites in the city's barangays, or wherever else is even more convenient, or in the case of the Monterrazas Clubhouse caretaker, burn it and the neighbors well-being, health be damned.

To date, no sustainable solution has been forwarded and instead, the city is spending huge sums of money to transport our waste to a far-flung sanitary landfill three provinces away.

More importantly, what do we do now?

While we've always preferred bringing our own bayong when going to market, our family have since doubled our efforts to reduce the waste we generate. We have since included used ice cream containers (for meats and fish and other wet product) and smaller reusable bags (for vegetables and other dry goods) to our "marketing gear" and at one time even launched a social campaign, "Huwag niyo na pong i-plastic." But even with much effort, we are still surprised at the amount of plastic and other residual non-biodegradable waste we end up with. Businesses don't care, once the consumer buys their product, the plastic waste that the product generates isn't their problem any more. The public doesn't care, once they've used the product and thrown out that plastic candy wrapper or detergent bag, it's not their problem anymore.

And as shown by the apparent ignorance (not to mention arrogance) of the Monterrazas Clubhouse caretaker, it seems that we've hardly made any move forward with regards to RA 9003 nearly two decades after it was enacted.

It's not too late and not really wrong to admit that we, all of us - the public, the government - went about this wrongly. Going back to square one is not a bad idea, in fact, I believe it's necessary.

This is a link to the full text of RA 9003.

Let's take this from the top, understanding and appreciating the need for an environment & people-friendly and safe waste management system, if the caretaker gets that, he may just stop arrogantly insisting on his right to burn plastics in his backyard.