With no viable landfill in sight, businesses in Cebu City have to take a long, hard look at paying fines of P500 or more if they don’t segregate their wastes.
Jade Ponce, Mayor Michael Rama’s appointed chairman of the Solid Waste Management Board (SWMB), said it’s high time for businesses, especially those that generate a big volume daily, to pay their share in garbage disposal services.
He said an outdated City Ordinance charges rates too low for collecting trash from private establishments.
Is that really the solution?
Cebu City produces about 500 tons of trash a day. Most of that can actually be reduced from the source.
The waste segregation ordinance in Cebu City is largely ignored. An average household or commercial establishment can look to its left and right, and not find any neighbor sorting out plastic bottles from the trash bins holding paper, food scraps, and other junk.
Mixed trash still ended up in Inayawan, making it a dumpsite, not a landfill or a “transfer station”.
When the Inayawan site was closed for good in January 15, in compliance with environmental laws, the backlog of garbage collection in Cebu City just worsened.
A dramatic example was the scene behind Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC). Hospital waste, which is hazardous and even toxic, is contracted out to a private service provider but the rest of the general garbage piled up, as regular collection service lagged. In the end, diapers and other medical waste got mixed instead of staying in color-coded trash bags.
By the time the Department of Public Service (DPS) came in to clean up, following media publicity of the stinking mounds, the volume filled eleven dump trucks.
The problem is equal parts due to limitations of the Cebu city government collection system — aging, poorly maintained trucks — and the indifference of consumers.
The crisis caused by the closure of the Inayawan landfill should direct pressure at the source of waste: people who generate it.
We agree that polluters should pay.
But charging higher fees just drives up the cost; if this is the first line of attack, it will not make a difference. Cebu City will still have 500 tons of trash to deal with.
Why can’t maximum efforts be focused instead on changing how Cebu city residents generate waste, not just where they toss it?
A culture of waste segregation – sorting out biodegradable from non-biodegradable matter – composting in backyards and empty lots, recycling bottles and plastic — is achieved through education, information, enforcement and good example. It will reduce the volume of trash that has to be trucked to a landfill
It’s back to the basics of a wise law, Republic Act 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000 and Cebu city’s implementing ordinance.
Segregate waste at the source — households, establishments and factories — or else don’t let trucks collect it.
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