Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle for lay participation in the observance
of the “Season of Creation,” the EcoWaste Coalition, an environmental watchdog,
appealed to Metro Manila’s 12 million residents to embrace waste prevention and
recycling as a daily habit.
The group, which espouses Zero Waste resource management sans
incineration, said that the national capital region’s projected waste
generation in 2014 of 9,060 tons per day, up from 8,601 in 2012, could be dramatically
reduced if all waste generators – a person, household, institution, business
and industry – consume responsibly and tame, if not forsake, the ever growing
throwaway culture.
Citing data from the National Solid Waste Management Commission, the EcoWaste
Coalition described Metro Manila’s trash as 52% biodegradable, 41% recyclable,
and 7% residual.
“As the Season of Creation is observed, we exhort everyone to reflect on the
throwaway culture that has seeped into our consciousness and way of life as if
the earth’s resources are limitless,” said Aileen Lucero, National Coordinator
of the EcoWaste Coalition.
“As if we live on an infinite planet with perpetual resources to exploit and
bottomless dumpsites and landfills to bury our trash,” she added.
“Let us subdue our wasteful culture and shrink our garbage and its toxicity to
the minimum by preventing useful stuff that can be reused, repaired,
repurposed, recycled or composted from being dumped or incinerated,” she
pleaded.
Pope Francis had previously asked the faithful “to combat the culture of waste
and of throwing out so as to foster a culture of solidarity and encounter,”
Lucero said, recalling the papal message for World Environment Day last
year.
Zero Waste resource management, she pointed out, will not only conserve
resources from being squandered while protecting the environment and the
climate, but will safeguard the health of people who eke out a living from
collecting and recycling waste, including the waste pickers – the least
protected sector in the recycling chain.
Zero Waste offers an opportunity to fuse and deepen the inherent linkage
between “environmental ecology” and “human ecology,” with the huge potential of
enhancing the people’s quality of life, the group noted.
Aside from reminding the public to segregate their discards and refrain from
mixed waste disposal and dumping, the group also urged the public to stop the
toxic practice of open burning.
A report released last week showed that the open burning of domestic waste “is
pumping far more pollution into the atmosphere,” saying that “that more than 40
percent of the world’s garbage is burned in such fires, with emissions that can
substantially affect human health and climate.”
-end-
Reference:
http://www.emb.gov.ph/nswmcdashboard/
http://en.radiovaticana.va/storico/2013/06/05/pope_at_audience_counter_a_culture_of_waste_with_solidarity/en1-698604
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es502250z