Better waste disposal system needed

New Yorkers are complaining that Hurricane “Irene,” when it hit the city that never sleeps, was not as strong as predicted by the weather bureau. They said that because of the warnings, they had to do things that proved to be unnecessary—nailing plywood over their windows, lining up for hours at supermarkets in a panic-buying at groceries, buying plenty of batteries and gasoline for expected shortages, and sleeping uncomfortably on the floor of the foyers of their apartments to be safely away from flying broken glass when the hurricane winds break the windows.

“With all the preparations and the hoopla on TV,” one New Yorker griped, “it was all for naught.”

People will always complain. The people of New Orleans also complained they were not warned enough when another hurricane devastated and flooded the city. They said they were not told that the hurricane would be that strong. Now the New Yorkers are griping that they were warned too much. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

In the Philippines, the people of northern Luzon are complaining that they were told Supertyphoon “Mina” would not hit land but it nevertheless sideswiped some provinces, killed a number of people, crumbled mountainsides, flooded rice fields ready for harvest, and cut off electricity in many towns. The unkindest cut was in Baguio City when several houses were buried in a landslide not of rocks and earth but of stinking garbage. A whole family was buried alive. Think of it: being buried in a mountain of trash. That’s the supreme insult.

Something is wrong here. The garbage dump was on the top of a hill and the houses were below it. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, the people on top and the dump below?

The collapse of the trash dump reminds us of the collapse of another mountain of garbage in Payatas, Quezon City, at the height of another storm. Buried, too, were people sleeping in their shanties below. Some victims were never found. Local government units and the scavengers themselves should have learned from that tragedy, but obviously they didn’t.

The government should really look again at our garbage disposal system.

The passage of the Clean Air Act stopped the burning of garbage in incinerators. Which led to the establishment of many garbage dumps, a number of which have reached their saturation point. One of them is the Payatas dump, which is fast becoming another Smokey Mountain. A garbage dump is out of place in the middle of a city, but the QC government seems to be nonchalantly closing its eyes to the danger its dump poses to scavengers and to the general health of its people.

There are many models in the world of what to do with garbage dumps and our public officials should study which is best for us. There are cities that have turned their dumps into parks. Dumps are fertile grounds for trees and plants to grow.

Some cities are using garbage for reclamation. And some use theirs for power generation, as is being done now, on a limited scale, in Antipolo where Metro Manila throws its trash.

Biogas has long been with us but the government is not maximizing its opportunities. Biogas is the methane produced by decomposing organic matter. It accumulates among the rotting trash in a dump. That is why most garbage dumps emit smoke. The methane among the garbage is smoldering, burning the trash around. The biogas is mined by sticking pipes into the trash mound; the gas comes out of the top of the pipe. This is like natural gas, or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and can be used to generate electricity or cook food.

The wet markets generate plenty of organic waste. If we put a biogas tank underneath each market and dump the market’s organic waste  there (no plastics and styrofoam please, because they do not decompose), biogas would provide the market’s power needs for free and thus save us precious dollars for the importation of crude oil. And it would reduce the volume of garbage dramatically. After some years, the sludge at the bottom of the tank can be sold as organic fertilizer, which is odorless.

But back to the typhoons and the garbage dumps. Pagasa has warned that more strong typhoons will hit the Philippines in the coming months. Even when there are no storms, the monsoon season brings so much rain that landslides are frequent. And the many garbage dumps towering over the shanties of scavengers and farmers are accidents waiting to happen. Scavengers like to have their shanties near the garbage dumps so they can be near their means of livelihood at all times. But this is against their best interests. They are putting their lives and that of their families in grave danger. Local government units (LGUs) should exert efforts to move them away from the danger zones.

And LGUs should not overfill their trash dumps so that they tower over the surrounding areas.

Finally, I want to go back to my original premise: that the government should devise a better garbage disposal system. Obviously, the present one is not enough. Separation by homeowners of their trash into organic and non-organic is an ideal arrangement, but very few homeowners are doing that despite a law mandating it. As a result, the volume of garbage being thrown into garbage dumps is growing each day.

Already, many streams, rivers and waterways are being filled with trash by what is called “guerilla garbage contractors.” These are contractors who are hired by LGUs to dispose of their trash, no questions asked. The LGUs get rid of their problems but they create new problems for other communities and the environment in general.

Unfortunately, President Aquino and other top officials would rather close their eyes to this growing unsavory problem.