Ben Madilynn
TO REINTRODUCE waste segregation at the barangay level, Acting Cebu City Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia announced that the City will pilot the “no segregation, no collection” policy on garbage in two to three barangays.
The Cebu City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Ccenro) earlier admitted that the waste segregation policy of the City has not been enforced for quite some time, and several barangay captains earlier told SunStar Cebu that they have difficulty establishing material recovery facilities due to land issues.
Garcia said he is currently working with the solid management board and the Department of Public Services for the initiative.
He said they are planning to take two to three barangays to pilot the City’s plans for segregation. However, he did not disclose which barangay they were eyeing.
Garcia added that he is now waiting for the board’s guidelines.
“Of course, we will work hand in hand with the barangays involved nga atong istrikto ang kampanya, ang segregation policy diha sa barangay level (that we will strictly implement the campaign on segregation policy down into the barangay level),” he told reporters on Monday, on the side of an event at SM Seaside.
He said he would announce soon when they will proceed with the program.
Garcia said when he visited the sanitary landfill in Barangay Binaliw on Sept. 20, he saw that about 50 percent of the waste being dumped there are plastics.
He said if the garbage were segregated right from the households, less garbage would be thrown at the landfill.
However, he admitted that it is not an overnight solution.
“We need education. Not only education but a campaign that we should teach our constituents segregation so that at source it will already be segregated and less garbage will be thrown at the landfill,” he said in a mixed Cebuano and English.
This was prompted when an official of Ccenro said in an interview with the Acting Cebu City Mayor’s teleradyo Action Mayor on Sept. 27, that the implementation of the no segregation, no collection policy is “far from perfect” since there is a lack of personnel and technicalities down to the barangay level.
Jean Carlo Generale, environmental management specialist of Ccenro, reportedly said that the barangay should take action to make the policy effective.
Without the attempt to exercise the policy, the barangays, which have no MRF, would opt to throw all of their garbage into the Binaliw landfill.
Several barangay captains told SunStar Cebu in separate interviews that the common reasons why the barangays were not able to provide their own MRF were due to lack of space or lot that would be intended for the facility to operate.
Some had a functional MRF but were later turned down due to the residents’ complaints about the odor.
SunStar Cebu tried to reach out to City Councilor Franklyn Ong, the president of the Association of Barangay Captains, but the latter has yet to reply to the messages.
The No segregation, no collection policy is not new to the City, as it was implemented during the time of former mayor Tomas Osmeña.
Under the City Ordinance 2031, or the implementation of solid waste segregation at source, the schedule of collection for non-biodegradable wastes in the City is every Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.
For the biodegradable wastes, the collection is every Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. / JPS
