All the STUFF

10.30.09

Solid waste is a problem everywhere. We all know there’s no ‘away’ place to throw our trash – it’s all sitting somewhere, outlasting us all. But several factors are converging here in the Philippines to push the problem to a crisis point.

In the US, everything is jumbo-sized; here, almost all products are sold in single serving bags or packets. Shampoo and laundry detergent in one-use metal sachets, just enough bagged soy sauce and vinegar for one meal, peanuts and chips in snack-size bags only. So tiny plastic pouches proliferate.

At the same time, population continues to rise (the World Bank projects the Philippines could soon have the highest growth rate in southeast Asia; currently around 2%) and municipal governments are unable to afford the expensive sanitary landfills we take for granted in the US. Instead, waste is normally dumped in open sites, with little on-site management and no barrier to prevent contamination into groundwater or nearby streams and neighborhoods.

With these constraints and without organized recycling programs in the provinces, communities have developed other systems for managing reuseables. Waste isn’t segregated before going to the dump site, so scavengers (often children) will comb through the waste at the site to pull out recyclables and sell them at local “junk shops.” These junk shops collect the reuseables/recyclables and sell them in bulk to factories in large cities or to companies abroad (mostly China, we’ve heard).

[touring the local dump site with municipal officials]

There is weekly, municipal garbage collection in our community, curbside on major roads, but often on a common neighborhood corner. An obstacle, though, for municipal waste management, is the mixing in of human waste with regular household waste for collection. Many homes here, particularly those in the fishing village where we’ve been doing our practicum, lack indoor plumbing, so the alternatives are to use the sea/seashore or the garbage truck.

Communities here are way ahead of us, though, in the realm of food waste. All food scraps are either fed to animals or buried for composting.

These are just our impressions at the 3 month point, so take them as somewhat uninformed observations –we have much to learn about waste management here, and it’ll be a big part of our work, particularly for Brandon. Our permanent site is fortunate to have a full-time waste management consultant on staff, who seems to really know her stuff and has many creative plans for engaging the community through waste education. We’re looking forward to gaining more experience in this area and hopefully making a small dent in this very large problem.