The Road to a Cleaner Philippines
By Edgar Louis de Gracia
HAPI Scholars
The Philippines is that it isn’t just a tourist destination for foreigners, it’s a vacation spot for Filipinos themselves. The country, which lies on the Eastern rim of the Asiatic Mediterranean, is one of the biggest tourist spots in Southeast Asia. It is composed of 7,640 islands featuring one of the most diverse flora and fauna in the world. Here, you may find lush and vibrant natural wonders like the islands of Catanduanes and Siquijor, or the beautiful beaches of El Nido and Boracay. Arguably, even meeting the Filipino people is enough reason in itself for foreigners to visit! The Filipinos’ unique and complex culture, cuisine, and lifestyle leave an indelible mark on everyone who comes across it, and their hospitality is rather legendary.
There is one aspect of the Philippines that needs drawing attention, though. As beautiful as it is as a country, it is facing insufficient solid waste management infrastructures to keep up with the amount of waste produced wherein a lack of improper waste disposal, inefficient waste collection, and lack of disposal facilities have led to large dumps being formed around communities. For better or worse, one glance at Metro Manila – where upscale cities sit next to polluted slums – reveals this glaring issue.
Compounding the problem is a lack of education in terms of waste management. Despite being put into law, waste segregation is taken as a light suggestion in the Philippines and without any serious enforcement by local government units (LGUs), many Filipinos don’t feel the need to care. Thus, it’s not uncommon for Filipino families in lower class brackets to just throw out their household trash in the streets or rivers instead of disposing of it in trash bins/bags. Entire dumps even pile up on the side of roads because LGUs fail to collect trash, which sit for months until they are finally collected. (As of this writing, my local LGU has made some moves in reducing such dumps from existing by regularly having garbage trucks pass once a week and building a proper waste disposal area with segregation in mind, as well as imposing a fine for those who needlessly throw their wastes. Time will tell if they stay consistent with this implementation.)
The importance of implementing proper waste management cannot be understated. Aside from the health benefits like reducing the risk of diseases like skin infections, bacteremia, and meningitis, proper waste management could benefit the Philippines in the long run with the conservation of natural resources, reduction of air pollution, and land pollution. A model example of that ideal society would be our neighbor Japan who, after implementing proper waste management and disposal, has cleaned her streets of waste to the point that drainage canals have fish in them. As such, we should strive for a much cleaner Philippines to ensure that future generations wouldn’t have to deal with the increasing load of waste they would need to solve due to the societal neglect of waste management.
It is within our power to emphasise caring more for the environment, reducing waste, and educating our fellow Filipinos on proper waste management. We should also convince our LGUs to take waste management more seriously and ensure that the entire process of cleaning up a city/province goes without a hitch. As Filipinos, we need to keep our beautiful country clean, not because we want to increase tourism in the Philippines but because we want to see the Philippines develop along with the Filipino people.
