When it comes to reducing Cebu City’s garbage volume and to a larger extent Metro Cebu’s mounting garbage woes, sometimes it’s the small, yet eventually effective solutions that often carry the day and pose potential for resolving this perennial urban blight.
While Mandaue City started on an earnest note its plans to rehabilitate the Butuanon River, Cebu City Hall is doing their part to expedite the healing of their side of the Mahiga Creek which they share with Mandaue City.
In an Oct. 27 story that appeared in Cebu Daily News, it was revealed that about 2,000 eco-pavers or bricks made of glass shards collected from the city’s garbage and mixed with concrete, will be used as part of a beautification project for Cebu City’s side of the Mahiga Creek at Barangay Mabolo in the North Reclamation Area (NRA).
The beautification project which consists of part of the 5.2 km side of the Mahiga Creek consists of a garden, a pathway and a bike lane and a public unveiling is scheduled on Nov. 12.
The initiative is spearheaded by City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) chief and former barangay Luz official Ma. Nida Cabrera, who also made headlines by spearheading the barangay’s recycling program that enabled her constituents to make bricks and useful materials from garbage.
Though beautification is nice for show, that’s not just all her office is doing to help clean up Cebu City. The Cenro also set up a biofence, a floating fence made up of plastic bottles wired together and used as a barrier to prevent garbage from floating to the sea and placed it on waterways in Barangay Tejero.
A biofence will also be set up at the Mahiga Creek for this same purpose. The biofence won’t prevent people from dumping garbage in the sea but it will bar their garbage from going any further.
And hopefully, the sight of the floating garbage would, just would, perhaps show to these willfully neglectful people the error of their ways and convince them enough to practice safe and proper garbage disposal.
Again, while Cebu City needs a proper landfill, these measures initiated by the Cenro showed that proper garbage disposal also needs practical, yet innovative and affordable solutions.
And one such solution is to recycle and maximize use of materials thought to be unusable to significantly reduce the city’s garbage volume.
We hope that Cenro will continue with more creative and applicable solutions to solve the city’s garbage problem, and these initiatives deserve public support and emulation from other local governments in Cebu.
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