Recently, a new resolution was passed that every last Friday of the month is a Scheduled Barangay Clean up Drive participated by all members of the Barangay Council, Sangguniang Kabataan, Barangay BNS/BHW, Barangay Employees and Staff, all Barangay Tanod/ Traffic Enforcers, Office of the CSWD and Day Care Teachers, and Barangay Nazareth Social Services Office at 6 AM until 10 in the morning.
In connection to these projects, the barangay with the approval of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) proposed a Bioreactor to rapidly transform and degrade organic waste and use it as organic fertilizers. A bioreactor has been defined by Pacey et al (1996) as ‘a sanitary landfill that uses enhanced microbiological processes to transform and stabilize the readily and moderately decomposable organic waste constituents within 5-10 years of the bioreaction process being implemented’. Bioreactors are therefore yet another improvement in municipal solid waste technology, an improvement that has emerged out of continuous and ongoing research into waste and waste behavior in landfills. This work is driven by the desire of operators, the community and regulators to achieve sustainability in society’s of its reject materials.
Objectives of the Study
This Community Research Project is aimed at examining Barangay Nazareth’s waste management system in the city of Cagayan de Oro. The specific objectives are to:
- Examine current waste management practices in the community whether these are effective and properly implemented.
- Identify the existing waste management system
- Identify problems associated with the current waste management system and how the community responds to these hindrances.
The following are the objectives of the waste management programs implemented in the community:
- Provide a source of renewable energy
- Reduce the potential for greenhouse gas emissions from solid waste landfills
- Provide an economical and sustainable disposal option
- Provide an overall reduction in long-term risk associated with landfills
- Public Awareness
People have a right to live in a clean, safe environment. Individuals and households also have a responsibility to protect their local environment, and to ensure that their waste does not create a health problem or nuisance for neighbours. People should be made aware that penalties can be applied to those who breach local or state laws.
Community members’ responsibilities in managing their waste include:
- keeping their yards free of rubbish that is likely to attract or shelter vermin (eg. old car bodies, piles of building material, food scraps, or garden waste)
- securing rubbish bins against scavenging dogs, rats and other animals
- making their bins available for regular council collection
- cleaning up dog waste regularly to prevent flies breeding
- preventing their dog wandering and soiling public areas or neighbors’ yards
- taking excess household waste to the council waste tip
- not illegally dumping waste, especially hazardous waste.
- Teach people proper waste disposal
Proper waste disposal minimizes the spread of infections and reduces the risk of accidental injury to staff, clients, visitors, and the local community and it helps provide an aesthetically pleasing atmosphere. It also reduces odors and reduces the likelihood of contamination of the soil or ground water with chemicals or microorganisms.
Biodegradable waste is a type of waste, typically originating from plant or animal sources, which may be broken down by other living organisms. Non-biodegradable is a type of waste that cannot be broken down by other living organisms.
Some places in the Philippines are practically “giant trash pits” because of individual habits and a “don’t care” attitude, and these cause calamities like floods, to respond to which more money is needed.
Furthermore, waste management is a huge health issue that concerns everyone and costs government millions upon millions of pesos.
- To keep way the people from health issues such as dengue.
While dengue could not be stopped totally, it could be controlled through an education campaign focusing on its prevention.
- To inform the people the importance of cleanliness of the surroundings.
Open landfills, according to EcoWaste Coalition, release toxic gases into the air and heavy metals into the soil, contaminating groundwater. Landfills are very expensive so landfill owners and operators will encourage more mixed wastes to be dumped into their facilities. Landfills undermine the implementation of environmental laws and the efforts of many communities to sort and segregate waste at source, compost and recycle.
Significance of the Study
With increasing population and industrialization, waste management is becoming a severe problem around the world. Proper means of waste disposal is crucial to public health and the environment. This helps maintain a cleaner environment and reduces the chances of spreading diseases. Proper waste disposal also reduces the probability of contamination of the soil and groundwater. It also plays a very crucial role of having a clean local environment that will immediately benefit the most vulnerable groups of society whose livelihoods often depend on the natural resources available locally.
Waste Management programs are most motivated to support:
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Environment - The environment affects all aspects of our lives, from the air we breathe, to the way we power our homes, to the parklands in which we play. Waste Management is committed to helping provide renewal resources to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and to conserving and maintaining wetlands, wildlife habitats and green spaces for people's enjoyment. Understanding the importance of the environment, Waste Management supports organizations and programs that preserve and/or enhance natural resources.
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Environmental Education - The key to ensuring the preservation of the environment is learning about the importance of protecting it and acting in an environmentally responsible manner. To this end, Waste Management prefers to support environmental education programs targeted at middle and high school students. This includes environmental and science related projects, science fairs, Earth Day projects and others.
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Community - Waste Management is committed to enhancing our communities through programs that help make them cleaner and better places to live. Local Waste Management facilities are proactive in identifying charities located in the immediate community that they serve and in many cases may have predetermined which organizations they will be supporting that year.
Archeological evidence said that humans had a way of managing their waste even before landfills and incinerators were developed. In many archeological sites, dumping pits were discovered where early people were believed to throw in their waste. In the course of history, waste regulations were enacted. This suggests that waste management is not a modern principle but in fact a natural response to existence.
Humans naturally know what to do with their waste as evidenced by the instituted waste management systems in the pre-modern and modern forms. However, along with global industrialization and population explosion, waste production blew out of proportion, endangering the environment and threatening humans and other living things. With the environmental issues raised here and there, there seems to be a need to remind humans of the importance of waste management.
Education and awareness campaigns play a great part here. Not all people after all are aware that the one piece of waste material they are sending to landfills or incinerators constitutes a greater threat to the environment. Presently, calls to recycle and waste reduction are widely active. And various projects and campaigns are launched every day, adding more noise to the earlier advocacies on proper waste management.
The most effective way to reduce waste is to prevent it from ever becoming waste in the first place. Therefore, there is a great need in understanding the importance of waste management because unless it is acknowledged by all people, waste management efforts will not progress to further heights.
Presentation and Analysis of Data
Barangay Nazareth implemented the ordinance “Tugkaran ko, Limpyohan ko” by posting sign boards around the locality especially in the streets to always remind the residents of their responsibility of properly disposing their wastes.
This ordinance seeks to inform the residents of the barangay to be responsible in maintaining the cleanliness in their respective areas. This is to prevent garbage from being scattered anywhere by dogs and other animals thus resulting in outbreak of certain diseases. Discipline is what this ordinance is all about, if every resident has the initiative to clean his own area then the community will be a better place to live in.
This is an example of a concerned resident telling others not just to throw their garbage anywhere especially near his place which could harm his plants and eventually his health once his area will become home of rodents and other pests.
To properly discipline the residents, the Barangay Captain issued an order of punishing those who violate the barangays’ waste management programs. As stated in the picture above, this open space is strictly not an area for throwing garbage. There is a fine of 1000 pesos and imprisonment for those violators.
This image shows a garbage truck with garbage collectors doing their daily routine of collecting garbage around the community. According to Mrs. Villa Y. Agustin, the current Barangay Secretary, there is a daily garbage collection around Barangay Nazareth including Sundays. To inform the residents of the coming garbage truck, there is a particular music played making them aware that they should be ready of their wastes. It was ordered that they shouldn’t place their garbage outside their homes before the arrival of the garbage truck because animals may scatter it around. There is also a need to segregate biodegradable from non-biodegradable wastes to make the collectors’ tasks easier.
Waste segregation should follow immediately after waste is generated. Effective segregation will reduce costs, promote recycling and protect the health and safety of all. Waste segregation is the practice of classifying waste and placing it into the appropriate waste container immediately after the waste is generated.
Importance of Waste Segregation
Facilities should accurately segregate waste to protect personnel from injury and infection by preventing hazardous waste entering inappropriate waste streams and divert problematic waste from incorrect waste streams. Correct segregation is necessary to ensure that materials which are reusable or recyclable are not discarded. The mixing of wastes is not permitted. If mixing occurs, wastes containing more than 200g of hazardous waste are to be classified as hazardous.
Biodegradable and Non-biodegradable Wastes
Biodegradable matter is generally material from an organic origin that when disposed of will decompose by a natural process. This means it will breakdown and decay into simpler forms of matter. It is any food scraps, garden waste, or materials or products made from plant or animal derived substances or artificial/man-made materials that are similar enough to organic matter and thus can still be broken down by a natural process.
Non-biodegradable material is inorganic or man-made matter that will not decompose. Any material that is non-biodegradable does not decay or breakdown into simpler forms of matter.
This means that when disposed of by us, nature cannot reuse these materials to fuel the cycle of life and it will remain as pollution in the environment. It also means, all the resources and energy used to make the material in the first place, are trapped within the waste. Because nature cannot breakdown the material; the matter and energy cannot be reclaimed and reused by the environment to generate more organic matter and energy.
Relying on non-biodegradable materials and ingredients is an unsustainable and polluting practice. It traps resources and energy that cannot be re-claimed in materials that cannot be broken down. Resulting in masses of polluting substances and rubbish that cannot every truly be digested by the planet.
Fortunately we are able to recycle some non-biodegradable waste. Meaning the materials can be reused to make new products and materials. This saves natural resources and reduces the impact of the vast amounts of in-organic waste ending up as landfill and pollution throughout the world.
Recently, a new resolution was passed that every last Friday of the month is a Scheduled Barangay Clean up Drive participated by all members of the Barangay Council, Sangguniang Kabataan, Barangay BNS/BHW, Barangay Employees and Staff, all Barangay Tanod/ Traffic Enforcers, Office of the CSWD and Day Care Teachers, and Barangay Nazareth Social Services Office at 6 AM until 10 in the morning.
This only proves how serious the barangay is in having a clean barangay suitable for living which can contribute then to community development. As barangay officials, they serve as models in the community which can result to a better public participation in proper waste management.
In connection to these projects, the barangay with the approval of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) proposed a Bioreactor to rapidly transform and degrade organic waste and use it as organic fertilizers. The picture above is an example of how a certain type of bioreactor looks like. A bioreactor has been defined by Pacey et al (1996) as ‘a sanitary landfill that uses enhanced microbiological processes to transform and stabilize the readily and moderately decomposable organic waste constituents within 5-10 years of the bioreaction process being implemented’.
Benefits of bioreactors
The benefits of bioreactors can be summarized as being:
•Economic
•Environmental
•Operational
This is summed up by Pacey et al (1996): It is now time to seriously consider acceptance and adoption of the bioreactor as a key strategy for deriving short and long-term environmental, regulatory, monetary and societal benefits. The bioreactor option is a direct result of engineering and building a new generation of environmentally sound landfills; it provides environmental security while permitting and encouraging rapid stabilization of the readily and moderately decomposable organic waste components. It is hoped that the emerging bioreactor technology will point our solid waste industry towards taking a new look at a very effective option to manage our waste disposal. It is for these reasons that the bioreactor is becoming increasingly preferred by operators and regulators worldwide
Disadvantages of bioreactors
The use of bioreactor technology has many potential benefits, but carries with it several potential problems as well. This range from relatively minor issues such as leachate seeps through the cap,
- higher compression loads on the leachate
- collection system
- increased gas emissions
- reduced geotechnical stability or slope failures
- require a higher level of operational and supervisory management
- increased capital and operational costs
As of now, the Barangay is still waiting for the DOST to conduct a seminar regarding of how a bioreactor works and its important role in proper waste management. The machine is ready and is now placed in Macasandig. The households will segregate the waste at source into biodegradable (wet) waste and non-biodegradable (dry) waste. The non-biodegradable (dry) waste will thereafter be segregated into recyclables, non recyclables, and domestic hazardous waste. This is for the awareness of the residents that they should start practicing waste segregation since bioreactors will only transform and degrade organic waste while the non-biodegradable will be recycled.
Conclusion/Result of the Study
The explosion in world population is changing the nature of waste management from mainly a low priority, localized issue to an internationally pervasive social problem. Risk to the public health and environment due to wastes in large metropolitan areas and barangays are becoming intolerable.
The paper discussed the importance of each waste management program in Barangay Nazareth, Cagayan de Oro City which is facing a proper waste management dilemma, for which all elements of the society are responsible. The community sensitization and public awareness is low. There is no system of segregation of organic, inorganic and recyclable wastes at household level. In spite of the programs being implemented in the community, open dumping is the most wide spread form of waste disposal. The possible reasons for poor implementation could be a combination of social, technical, institutional and financial issues. Public awareness, political will and public participation are essential for the successful implementation of the legal provisions and to have an integrated approach towards sustainable management of municipal solid wastes in the country.
For the community of Barangay Nazareth, the project which is currently being waited for the orientation regarding the project, Bioreactor, would certainly bring a decrease of garbage contribution to the landfill.
For the city, Cagayan de Oro, especially those who were living near landfill, using bioreactor could decrease their sufferings (e.g. odors and diseases) because using it would lessen the throwing of garbage on the site. A possibility in the future that there will be no longer landfill or dumping site of garbage in the city if all communities would implement and use bioreactors.
For the people in Nazareth, once the orientation for the use of bioreactors will be conducted in the barangay, they will be more aware on the garbage that they would throw out. The people would definitely segregate all its garbage before handing it to the collectors: biodegradable for the bioreactor and the non-biodegradable for the buyers who buy garbage that can be reused.
Barangay Nazareth’s waste management programs are all ideal; it only needs further implementation and also cooperation among the residents. With the advent of a new technology which is the Bioreactor, it can greatly contribute to the advancement of the community. Discipline is one of the major keys in achieving the goals of these waste management projects. After all, the most effective way to reduce waste is to prevent it from ever becoming waste in the first place.
Interview Consent Form
September 27, 2010
Good day!
We are second year Business Administration students from Xavier University- Ateneo de Cagayan and we would like to conduct an interview for our Community Research Project in Political Science 10.1 regarding Barangay Nazareth’s current waste management programs.
During this study, you will be asked to answer some questions as to how waste management projects are being implemented in your community. This interview was designed to be approximately a half hour in length. However, please feel free to expand on the topic or talk about related ideas. Also, if there are any questions you would rather not answer or that you do not feel comfortable answering, please say so and we will stop the interview or move on to the next question, whichever you prefer.
All the information will be kept confidential. We will keep the data in a secure place.
Thank You for your cooperation. God Bless!
By your signature below, you agree to participate in the study.
___________________________________ (Barangay Secretary)
Participant’s Signature above Printed Name
___________________________________ (Barangay Administrator)
Participant’s Signature above Printed Name