Iloilo City pushes behavior change to curb waste in waterways

ILOILO CITY — The Iloilo City government is pushing households along waterways to change how they dispose of their garbage, saying repeated cleanup operations will not solve the problem if residents keep dumping waste into rivers and creeks.

General Services Office (GSO) head Neil Ravena said behavioral change is particularly needed among about 3,000 informal settlers living along the easements of the Jaro and Batiano rivers.

Under Presidential Decree 1067, or the Water Code of the Philippines, riverbanks in urban areas are subject to a 3-meter easement for public use, where building structures of any kind is prohibited.

“We cannot consider a garbage crisis. Our solid waste management is okay, including the collection system in our barangays. Our problems are the households in the easement of our waterways … We need behavioral change in our informal settlers living in our waterways,” Ravena said in an interview Monday.

Ravena said collecting garbage from households along waterways remains difficult because garbage trucks cannot reach many of these areas.

He said many of these communities can be reached only by footbridge, and residents must walk to collection points or barangay materials recovery facilities, making it more convenient for some to dump their waste directly into waterways.

Ravena again described the city’s cleanup operations as a “palliative solution,” stressing that barangays and communities must take primary responsibility for keeping waterways clean.

“There should be a social behavioral change in the barangays because they should be the primary ones that should be doing this,” he said.

“We do not want a mindset that they can just throw away garbage and there’s the city government cleaning everything after,” he added.

Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, assigns barangays the task of segregating and collecting biodegradable, compostable, and reusable waste, and it prohibits dumping waste in public places such as canals and esteros.

Ravena said residents should take part in cleanup activities and help keep waterways clear after they have been cleaned.

“Without behavioral change in our residents in waterways and creeks, we will have a hard time,” he said.

Pilot study shows early gains

The city, in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Central Philippine University, is conducting a pilot behavioral change study on solid waste management in 18 barangays across Jaro, La Paz, Mandurriao, and Molo.

Ravena said the study has produced positive results in the pilot barangays, particularly among households along the Batiano River.

He said waste collected from the area once reached as much as 760 kilograms per day but has since dropped to 300 to 400 kilograms daily.

Ravena, however, acknowledged that sustaining the program remains a challenge, as it covers only 18 of the city’s 180 barangays.

“If we could do 50%, there could be significant impact in clearing, and we can say that social behavioral change is indeed significantly affecting them,” he said.

Tons of waste pulled from waterways

A cleanup at Dungon Creek on Sept. 25 by the GSO, the Facility Conservation Office, the Task Force on Anti-Squatting and Illegal Structure, and the City Environment and Natural Resources Office collected 980 kilograms of waste, mostly plastics.

A simultaneous cleanup in La Paz Norte collected another 910 kilograms.

Ravena said nearly 10 tons of waste had been collected from the Jaro River in two weeks.

He said some of the waste collected from Dungon Creek appeared to have been dumped into the waterway after it had already been collected from households or barangays.

“Mostly plastics, and it is somewhat frustrating on our part because we were able to collect waste in sacks, which means this was disposed of in the waterway after it was collected in their barangays or households,” he said.

Ravena identified the waterway in Cubay, along the boundary of La Paz and Jaro, as one of the city’s major remaining problem areas.

He said the city would deploy a team to the area, where an estimated six to eight truckloads of waste need to be retrieved from the waterway.