Non-burn technique with garbage

BY PET MELLIZA/ THE BEEKEEPER

I was napping  when my mobile phone rang. It was a text message from a friend decrying the billows of smoke from the garbage mound at the convento of the Parish of St. John, Igbaras, Iloilo.

Somebody burned the garbage dump that included dry leaves, twigs and the pesky plastics, at the back of the convento April 18.

Section 20 of Republic Act 8479 or the Clean Air Act of 1999 prohibits the burning of “municipal wastes”, among others. The term refers to garbage generated by communities within a locality like the garbage mound at the convente. 

There are few exceptions to that provision, among which is the traditional “siga” or “dabuk”, the burning of dry leaves for the “paaso” to rid one’s home of mosquitoes and flies or the garden of pests.

Violators of Section 20 face a fine ranging from P10,000 to P100,000 or imprisonment of six months to six years.

The last two paragraphs of Section 20 mandates of local government units (LGUs) to implement ecological waste management and adopt “non-burn” technologies in treating solid wastes. Its full text reads:

Local government units are hereby mandated to promote, encourage and implement in their respective  jurisdiction a comprehensive ecological waste management that includes waste segregation, recycling and  composting. “With due concern on the effects of climate change, the Department shall promote the use of state-of-the-art,  environmentally-sound and safe non-burn technologies for the handling, treatment, thermal destruction,  utilization, and disposal of sorted, unrecycled, uncomposted, biomedical and hazardous wastes. 

The parish workers apologized and quickly doused off the fire after somebody reminded them that the incineration of the large garbage heap was prohibited by the Clean Air Act. They blamed somebody else.

We don’t present ourselves as model in waste management but we can share our experience. Our place at Mandurriao, Iloilo City was once unlucky (some say until today) because the garbage collector passed by only once a week and there were cases when no garbage truck plied the district for weeks even. Today, the city’s garbage people go the round once or twice weekly.

Before, every garbage collection day, we dumped at least two large garbage bags at the gate for pick up by the crew of the truck. And we cursed to the heavens if they failed to show up because that meant waiting for another week to rid of the mounting garbage.

Today, even if the garbage collector disappeared for a month, we don’t worry. We already stopped sending to the city dumpsite dry leaves and twigs, kitchen wastes and food scraps in the garbage bag. Boasting aside, we now practice “zero waste” at home.

We dispose of only plastic products which we segregate for convenience of the collector who sell them to buyers at the dumpsite in Brgy. Calajunan.

All our organic or biodegradable wastes are retained at home to decompose into green or organic fertilizer or soil conditioner. We fabricate our own pro-biotics (tibicus tea and fermented iba or balimbing) which we take for health reasons.

Fermented fruits and other pro-biotics contain friendly microorganisms that helps the metabolism of the body and increases its resistance to diseases. When sprayed on organic wastes, microorganisms accelerate the decaying process. 

Try spraying your own mound of dry leaves with pro-biotics. In a week’s time, you can collect organic fertilizer underneath it. The combined actions of the microorganisms and insects speeds up the process.

We also have plastic containers where we stack dry leaves. This time around, we no longer spray them with pro-biotics. It’s the African night crawlers or earthworms that do the job of consuming the leaves, converting them into vermi-manure,  a plant food superior to any chemical fertilizer. (An engineer at the Iloilo Provincial Engineer’s Office now boasts of making money from her organic red rice. She combines pro-biotics and vermi-manure in her farm in Pototan, Iloilo.)

Out experience shows that feeding dogs daily with food mixed with pro-biotics raises the animals' resistance to diseases or they recover fast if they were ill. Their wounds heal in short period. They don’t emit foul odors. Their almost odorless feces decompose fast. Their stools in the morning are dry and hardened by the afternoon that you can hold them like pieces of charcoal.