Last July 27-29, 2016, the 1st Cordillera Environment Summit was held in Baguio at Crown Legacy Hotel. The three day summit featured an exhibit of recycled, repurposed products from plastic and other types of waste, miniatures of houses built out of mud and decorated with broken glass or wine bottles. Best of all, there were speakers who came from different sectors who spoke on more responsible ways of managing waste or lessening it.
Delegates from all over the Cordillera had come to listen to speakers from the Zero Waste Cluster of The Baguio We Want, Maryknoll Ecological Sanctuary, Baguio City National High School, Mountain Maid Training & Development Foundation, Texas Instruments, HEDCOR, the Barangay Captain of Imelda Village here in Baguio, a Kagawad from Lourdes, and many others. All of them were eager to share their best practices on waste reduction and reuse all for a better, cleaner environment that will benefit all of us, not just in the Cordillera but all in the country and the world. Each message was an echo of each other’s messages: we are all interconnected and Cordillera waste can destroy our natural forests and the beauty of our environment, and our health, but also the lowlands as our garbage flows down our rivers into the lowlands, and eventually out to our seas and oceans.
The speakers all shared better ways of taking care of our environment. Kagawad Becky Tenefrancia shared how their Bioman in Palma Barangay collects biodegradable waste in their area and composts it. She also spoke about how the government officials can improve their Solid Waste Management Plans by making sure it adheres to RA 9003, the Solid Waste Management Act. Ms. Jane Liwan of Besao, calling herself a Trash Transformer, shared how she built her home using alternative building materials like mud, grass, wood shavings from wood carvers, PET bottles filled with shredded plastic, wine bottles and other materials we normally think of as trash.
Experts and practitioners of composting and vermiculture, Ms. Elma Donaal of BCNHS, Sister Guadalupe Bautista of Mountain Maid Training & Development Foundation, and Ms. Veron Malecdan, all shared how much more beneficial and profitable it is for us to compost all our biodegradables and use vermiculture to produce marketable fertilizers.
All the speakers’ ideas and practical ways of trash management inspired me even more to segregate from the source, my home, instead of depending on our barangay officials and the government to take care of my garbage. Sitting there listening, as a private individual who was there voluntarily, missing a day’s work and not on the government payroll, made me reflect even more on how important it is for each one of us to really do our best to say no to plastic, especially to single use plastic, and to do more to reduce, reuse, recycle so that we can have a better Baguio, a better Cordillera.
Engineer Alex C. Luis of the Environmental Management Bureau here in Baguio had one of the most powerful messages for me when he spoke about how we need to not just say “Tapat ko Linis ko” but to clean all around our own properties and the general surroundings as we “care for the common good,” a tenet he learned from the book of Pope Francis “Laudato Si”. He even went on to say, “Why do you say you are a Christian if you litter and throw your trash everywhere?” Indeed, why do we have the gall to call ourselves “humans” and believers in God if we do not act as good stewards of our planet and our home?
Sadly, apart from the Baguio barangay officials who were speakers or Baguio residents who were speakers and the organizers of the event who were from Baguio, no representative of the Baguio City Mayor’s Office could be found. After the first day, members of Baguio local government unit who had signed for all three days of the seminar promptly disappeared and were nowhere to be seen by the second day of the Summit. Isn’t that such a big shame? There were visitors from Tabuk, Kalinga, Besao, Ifugao, some of whom were highly placed officials. They were more interested in taking care of their environment. While our very own Baguio City officials, the leaders of the city that produces the most trash that we need to truck it all the way to Tarlac, were nowhere to be seen.
Most of our Baguio City officials and our mayor are more interested in passing Baguio’s 10 Year Solid Waste Management Plan which have two glaring violations of RA 9003: the building of more landfills in Baguio and the building of a Waste-to-Energy Plant which is already against the law. How is it that they were not there during the summit to listen to better waste management practices? Why are they not seemingly interested in more cost-effective ways of managing our trash and encourage Baguio citizens to be more disciplined and responsible in managing our own garbage? Why do they support quick-fix solutions like the Waste-to-Energy Plant and buying six more garbage trucks for the city rather than finding ways to cut down on costs and ban plastic in our City once and for all?
These questions and many more bother me especially after attending the first, and hopefully not the last, Cordillera Environmental Summit. Still, I am grateful to the DENR Environmental Management Bureau that took the time to organize this event. Most especially, I am grateful to all the speakers who came and shared their expertise and experiences on how we can manage our trash and, hopefully, still save our beautiful Cordilleras, our beautiful Baguio.
By Maria Agnes C. Garcia
