Garbage con

JUNE IS Environment Month, celebrated globally, and in the Philippines as  mandated by Proclamation No. 237 signed in 1988 by the now sainted Cory Aquino.

June 5 is World Environment Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972, in recognition of the day the UN Conference on Human Environment started in Stockholm, Sweden. Its primary aim is to “raise global awareness of the need to take positive environmental action.”

June 8 is World Oceans Day, introduced in 1992 and officially recognized by the UN in 2008 to impact the role of the world’s oceans as “the lungs of our planet, providing most of the oxygen we breathe, (as well as) a major source of food and medicines and a critical part of the biosphere.”

June 17 is World Day to Combat Desertification, observed since 1995 to “promote public awareness relating to international cooperation to combat desertification and the effects of drought.”

June 25 is Philippine Arbor Day, national day for tree-planting designated by  Proclamation No. 396 of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in June 2003 to  encourage the citizens to plant trees and participate in highlighting the role of trees in nurturing the environment and human life, as the environmentalist Rox Pena put it.

A good month to stir public awareness of environmental issues, the month of June is. But not to spur government to action, so it would seem.

As we write, how many more hectares of the world’s rainforests are being cleared? How many more mountains are being levelled for destructive mining, for yet another housing (mis)development? How much more noxious gas is being spewed in the atmosphere by industries, by cars, by dumpsites to further deplete the ozone layer? How much of our seas, our rivers are being continuously turned into garbage dumps?   

Indeed, as we write this – and we need not go beyond our own immediate borders – continuously operating In Pampanga are 34 open dumpsites. So reported the Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. (MCWMC), operator of the officially approved sanitary landfill in Kalangitan, Capas, Tarlac.

“Out of the 22 local government units in Pampanga, only nine are disposing of their garbage in our sanitary landfill.” So was Armando Garcia, MCWMC president, quoted in an Inquirer story by the intrepid Tonette Orejas. And, “out of the 421,264 metric tons of estimated annual waste generation of the province in 2011, only 43,057.08 MT were disposed of in the MCWMC sanitary landfill.”

A large volume of unmanaged solid wastes there.

No other LGU in Pampanga has given a sorrier, indeed, a sorer face to the sordid solid waste mismanagement problem than the City of San Fernando, if only for its greater share of articles in the local and national media dealing with the problem.  

No less than the highly credible, much revered Most Rev. Pablo Virgilio David, auxiliary bishop of San Fernando, braved the stench and toxicity of the city’s open dumpsite in Barangay Lara and called on the local authorities to cease and desist from further operating it.   

Even as the bishop strongly denounced the dumpsite, the city stubbornly denies its existence. Pointing to the mountains of stinking garbage there as “residual wastes” stocked to be processed into energy-producing pellets.

“Barangay Lara is where you can find Spectrum Blue Steel’s (SBS) pelletizing plant. The plant is close to the city’s former open dumpsite.” So was one Esteban Callo Jr., chief engineer of True Green Energy Corporation (TGEG), quoted in a story here. “Unfortunately, we had problems in shredding residual wastes when our machine malfunctioned which forced us to pile up ready-to-shred residual wastes outside the plant.”

Only idiots will buy such an alibi.

And an unbuying Mayor Oscar Rodriguez promptly ordered SBS to shred all remaining residuals within three weeks or if they can’t, to bring all residuals to the sanitary Kalangitan landfill. That order made on May 23, Mayor Oca’s deadline for SBS is tomorrow, June 6. What gives, thereafter?

Whatever, the prospects are not promising.

“Rowee Freeman, City of San Fernando environment officer, said a small volume of waste is thrown in Kalangitan because the bulk has been diverted to a waste-to-energy facility that is operated by the Spectrum Blue Steel Corp. since March 1.”

So was written in Tonette’s Inquirer story of May 28, that came after the Punto! story, May 24, of the SBS admission of its failure to pelletize and thus the pile up of “residual wastes” in Lara. Freeman is apparently clueless of what’s smelling in her own stinking backyard.

Her assertion in the same Inquirer story that the “waste segregation campaign has reduced residual waste by 25 percent from 130 MT in 2010 to 100 MT in 2011” only compounded, if not complexed, her cluelessness.  

While incredulous with her figures, given the MCWMC report of the City of San Fernando generating  51,464.16 metric tons of waste in 2011, Freeman nevertheless affirmed, if inadvertently – via simple arithmetic – that indeed, the city has a gargantuan waste mismanagement problem.

Okay dummies, the equation goes:  51,464.16 metric tons of waste minus 100 metric tons of residual waste equals 51,364.16 metric tons, less “small volume of waste thrown in Kalangitan” equals BIG volume of waste unmanaged. Some 700 tons of it piled up in Lara. 

And then there’s the highly respected Marco Nepomuceno of ENext, a Belgian company that produces “high-calorific green coal,” casting doubt on the integrity of SBS’ pelletizing plant.    

A working plant, so Nepomuceno contends, needs no less than $27 million to put up and operate. That’s over P1 billion.

The dysfunctionality, if not inoperability, of the SBS’ facility in Lara makes an affirmation of Nepomuceno’s contention.

Which, its engineer, Callo himself confirmed: “As of now, all we can do is sort out residuals being sent to our plant. We cannot yet press together or pelletize these residuals because we’re still waiting for our bigger machines,” adding that his company’s top officials in Thailand have heard of the problem but have not given any responses yet.

Pure garbage talk. All the pun intended there.

Yes, today – June 5 – is World Environment Day, this year’s theme is: “Green Economy: Does it include you?”

Green Economy, the UN Environment Programme explains, is “one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.”

“We can think of a green economy as an economic environment that achieves low carbon emissions, resource efficiency and at the same time is socially inclusive,” furthered UNEP.

With those parameters vis-à-vis the environmental realities discussed above, we can only shamefully rue: Green Economy: We are damned!