Do you wash your trash?

One of the things that really surprised me is the mandate from the powers that be to clean your trash !

Yes that’s right before we can dispose of our trash we have to make sure its washed!  It is for recycled goods mostly but it really made me compare the difference between garbage disposal here in the Philippines and where I am from in the US. There in the US, it was just second nature to throw away used bottles, cans and anything else you didn’t want anymore without regard to where it ended up.

But here I really have to say there is much more attention paid to the environment and recycling. Maybe the original intention wasn’t about the balance in nature and the green planet concept, but certainly the need to conserve and reuse and recycle has a secondary benefit.

It is now a general practice in the US, where we use a blue bin for used containers marked with a recycle number. Here though they take it to another level, as was the case for us last week, that’s when the Barangay Captain came to inform us not to dispose of trash that hasn’t been cleaned!  It seems to be a good system. I can recall the amount of trash I used to accumulate and dispose of in the States for just myself and my dog.  It was about twice what we hand to the trash pick up service we have here for six people. Everything is separated here too, paper is not mixed with plastic, all bottles and cans are of course recycled and everyday, and discarded food stuffs are never mixed with those. There is a special need for that.

Sometimes very early in the morning you will hear the front gate, “ayo - naa mo’y lamaw” it means “hello – do you have a piece of rice!” What they are looking for is left over food scraps to feed their pigs with. The kids will usually come calling several times a day but it really goes to show that almost nothing is wasted here.

It is a very efficient system but i don’t know how wide spread this practice is, I imagine it is practiced in allot of the other Barangay, but I am not sure. Does this system exist in your part of the world?

Several Steps Back To The Time Of Coal Power!

The City where I was born is called Bradford, situated in West Yorkshire in the Industrial Heart of the country in the gloomy Northern Area of England! This area really became developed in the Industrial Revolution when the invention of Steam Power was the latest and greatest technological breakthrough to hit the world! Bradford was at that time the center of the worlds woolen industry so with the new power source, literally thousands of new facilities or mills were constructed in order to speed up the production of the finished woolen cloth and vast fortunes were made by the Wool Barons!

In order to produce the steam, Coal, which is a fossil fuel was readily available in huge quantities and had for a long time been processed to produce gas for household and street lighting purposes, I am sure that most people have seen films of Jack the Ripper carrying out his evil deeds under the Gas Lights of old White Chapel in London! Coal was burned to supply everything from the production of Electricity in later times, Steam to supply the  power to drive the textile machines, Steam to power the boilers for heating purposes in Offices, Hospitals, Schools etc, Steam Engines were the prime movers for the Vehicles and Railways of the day, coal was the standard fuel for cooking and heating in the homes, basically, life in them days revolved around coal!

The downside of this wonderful new power source was that coal is a dirty fuel and pumped out every kind of pollutant imaginable but nobody really knew or cared about these things as thousands of jobs were produced and money was plenty, for the mill owners at least. Everything was filthy as the thick black smoke from thousands of factory chimneys was billowing 24 hours a day continuously, the air in Manila would have been considered pure compared with the English air of the time! It was only after some years that the now well known health issues were realized! This kind of pollution went on for over 100 years and only started to decline when new Man Made Fabrics replaced the heavy Woolen Cloth produced in Northern England so with this turn of events, the factories started to close down! In the 1960’s, the government, realizing the problems, went on a clean up drive to make life better for the people, Coal was now being replaced with new forms of power such as Natural Gas from the North Sea, cleaner ways of producing Electricity like Hydro Power, Nuclear Power and Oil were now being developed, household cooking and heating were now either Gas or Electric, many areas were declared Smokeless where Coal and Wood were no longer allowed to be burned as a fuel! Even cleaner forms of fuel were being used in vehicles!

In 2003, the last time that I visited my home town, it was not the same place where I grew up! When I was a kid I remember everything being black, even a new building did not stay clean for long! Mothers could not get the laundry clean because as it was hung out to dry, specks of soot wood land on it! With everything being covered in soot, it was impossible to keep kids clean also! Now, it was a very clean place, all but one of the mills had been demolished and the air was clean and clear, the only major change that I noticed was the amount of immigrants there or maybe I just had not noticed this point as I had not really lived there since 1970!

Basically, what I am saying is that the age of coal is now nearly a thing of the past in many countries and areas around the world as new forms of Power Producing Technology are taking over but unfortunately, in the Sarangani area of Mindanao Coal has arrived and the problems with it are just beginning!

There are plans to build a 200 megawatt Coal Fired Power Station at the mouth of Sarangani Bay right on top of a Marine Protected Area and World Class Dive Site! The plan for this Facility is to expand to 900 megawatt as the requirement for power increases! The company says that there will be no pollution and new Clean Coal technology will be used and only imported Low Sulfur Content Coal will be used to fuel the plant but the same company are backing a proposed Coal Mining Operation near Lake Sebu, one of the local beauty spots and the coal quality there is proven to be young and of low quality! Say what you want, there is no such thing as Clean Coal, the smoke from the discharge chimneys might not be visible but the pollutants certainly are still pumped out into the atmosphere adding to the Greenhouse Gas volumes that scientists say are the major cause of Global Warming!

Now, also in Gen San, the many Fish Canneries are using Coal for their heating requirements because as they say, Coal is cheaper than Bunker Fuel! All these companies have secured the required Environmental Compliance Certificates but who checks on these Coal Burners and what happens to the Toxic Ash which is a unwanted bi product of coal burning! as more and more companies are starting to burn coal, I can see back to my youth living in a heavily polluted city, with financial gain being the motivator for the introduction to the area of this new, Clean Coal Technology as they call it!

There are plans in this area for several new ventures such as a large Open Pit Copper Mine, New Open Pit Coal Mine, Industrial Parks, Cement Works etc and all this will have power supplied from the Coal Fired Power Station, who will benefit the most from all of this, the people of the area or a few faceless facility owners who probably do not know where Sarangani Province is!

With the world going Green and new really clean and renewable technology being available, why must Coal be resurrected? The simple reason is PROFIT plain and simple, the health and wealth of the local population does not matter, the damage to the environment does not matter, the future of our children does not matter, only the bottom line, profit is seen by these companies, nothing else matters to them!

I really hope that the government will see sense in time and not let such abuses to the environment and health of the people happen as there are other forms of energy available to achieve the same end!

Note, President Ronald Regan was wearing a suit which was made of Bradford Wool Cloth when he was shot!, such cloth is good but it is not Bullet Proof!

Nuclear Energy in The Philippines

I must confess, I was never a friend of nuclear energy. I really got keen of hearing, when Philippine Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes admitted that tapping nuclear energy as a possible source of power is an option that the Department of Energie (DOE) wants to take.

Now I really like to use the term “however”. Yes, thanks God! “However”, Reyes said, “let’s not get into nuclear power until we are dead sure (?) that we are ready. And, we are ready if we have stakeholder support.”

Well said, Sir.

It was also very good, that Reyes mentioned the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which was built and then eventually mothballed. It is indeed the most expensive nuclear power plant, which one set up but is not operational.

Of course, we all know, that nuclear power has its inherent dangers which the whole world is trying to solve – also in my home country Germany. Since many years some people tried to convince me, for example, that there are also advantages as well.. The nuclear power is baseload and will remain stable for as long as 50 years. It provides us steady and cheap power in the long run.

So far so good… .

Anyway, as we could learn from a press release: The Philippine government is planning to start up its first 600-megawatt nuclear power plant by 2025, based on doe data.

We’ll wait and see and have a cup of tea… .

Mother Nature in the Philippines

One of my columns in printed media says something about the environmental lawyer Antonio Oposa Jr., he of varied and risky advocacies for Mother Nature, is this year’s recipient of the Environmental Law Award (from 2008) from the US-based Center of International Environment Law (CIEL). Oposa is the first Asian and Filipino to win this award.

Environment protection in the Philippines seems to be a sad topic. If I still look around, I really get discouraged. Sure, there are still some (not many) politicians and people like Oposa, who act for the future of this country’s environment. Oposa, for example, worked hard to establish the so-called maximum sustainable yield that would set limits to commercial fishing.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead has said: “Never doubt for a single moment that a handful of thoughtful and committed men and women can change the world!”

When I started writing columns for TINIG NG BAYAN (published in Abra) during the early 1980s, I got a lot of friends there. Can you imagine, how sad I feel while reading the news about the Chico River? The 175 km Chico River that runs through the hinterlands of the Cordillera (Mountain Province, south east direction from Abra and east from Ilocos Sur) is fast losing its allure of clean and abundant water, and local officials fear that the communities depending on it may soon find their supply murky or dry.

Let me quote Paquito Moreno, Environment Management Bureau Regional Director: “The towns the river traverses must also control their dumps and put up their waste disposal facilities pursuant to the solid waste ecological management law (Republic Act No. 2003)!” Sure Sir, it should be, it should be A MUST!

I really admire people and institutions, doing something for the Philippine environment. The Asian Development Bank, for example, expressed support by committing to include the plans in its Integrated Natural Resources and Environmental Management program, an $80 million project that would rescue major watersheds in the Philippines, such as the Chico River or the Lake Lanao in Mindanao.

We need more of it… .

Illegal logging

It’s not long time ago, I wrote an article entitled “Philippine Bookworms”. Being in the publishing business since 1969 I know very well about the demand for paper (trees!) if one talk about books and magazines.

I was surprised to read the following news:

“Despite the myriad problems bugging the Philippine wood industry, wood products have remained one of the country’s biggest exports over the years. Wood-craft and furniture exports racked up nearly 102 million US dollars in August this year, according to the National Statistics Coordinating Board (NSCB).”

More of the Philippines wooden furniture and wood-craft were shipped to the US, the Philippines’ largest market with 61 percent of total market share. Other markets for Philippine wood products include Japan, Australia, United Kingdom, and Italy.

Trade Under Secretary Merly Cruz expressed optimism that the ongoing industry cluster capacity and development program of the government will help further in the growth of the Philippines’ wood industry.

And the medal’s other side?

I received a message from Butuan City telling me the following:

“Tribal leaders of the different tribes in the Caraga Region have called for an end of what they described as silent but dangerous, unabated illegal logging (and mining activities) in this region. Under the auspices of the church-based Caraga Conference for Peace and Development some two weeks ago, the summit attended by more than 500 lumad leaders from seven provinces. Among members of this conference have been the Armed Forces of the Philippines, PNP, national government sectors and others, like the Roman Catholic’s Dioceses of Cagayan de Oro, Butuan, Surigao, Tandag and Malaybalay, where the tribes Manobo, Higaonon, Talaandig, Banwaon, Mamanwa and many more are still living… .

“The Sleeping Dinosaur” Peninsula, 8 km Badas zigzag road going down town to Mati.

Try to count the trees…

Where have all the trees gone…?

Show some pride, Pinoy!

You know, one thing that I noticed since the first time that I visited the Philippines back in 1990, and all through the years is that when you enter the house of most Filipinos, it is very clean!  Even the most poor of people who have not much more than a shack display the utmost of cleanliness.  It always made me feel good to see this in Filipino households.

If you accept my statement that Filipino households are kept very clean and sanitary, I wonder how we can reconcile that with my next statement…  Did you ever notice that if you go to the beach here, or some other “nature spot” there is trash everywhere?  Certainly, this is not true at every tourist spot, but it is true at many, maybe even most.  You go to the beach and there are wrappers from potato chips, coke cans and that kind of stuff littering the scenery.  What was once a beautiful natural spot is suddenly a garbage dump!  Why?  Is there no pride, or sense of urgency to keep the environment clean?  It appears not.

It is so unfortunate to see this.  Another thing you will often see is that the water itself is filthy dirty.  Here in Davao, I have been told that raw sewage is dumped directly into the Gulf, and because of that the water in Davao Gulf is not suitable for swimming.  You pretty much have to go over to Samal Island to find clean water that is good enough for a swim.  Sometimes, if you are in a particularly bad spot, the water in the sea is visibly littered, and even smells bad.

If a kid has a bag of chips, or some candy, is it hard to put the wrapper in a garbage can?  If the kid is careless, why can’t the parent tell their kids to clean up their mess?  Honestly, I find it quite disgusting, and disheartening when I see kids throwing their trash on the beach, in the water or on the streets.  I often want to say something, but it’s not my place to tell other people’s kids to clean up their mess.  Or the adults, for that matter.

One of the sad things is that the country is constantly begging for more tourists to visit.  I have contact with a lot of tourists who visit Davao, and I hear from them often about litter, dirty beaches and such.  Wouldn’t it be easy to just clean up after yourself and keep things pristine?  To me, that should be the goal.  How many people are unemployed, hungry for food, can’t find a job?  Put them to work cleaning up the environment of the Philippines!  Why not?

Take some pride in your country, Pinoy!  Clean things up!  Keep it that way!  I love the Philippines, but they really need to address this issue!