Solon pushes recycling, denounces reclamation

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

Senator Cynthia Villar in Iloilo City on Thursday called for other local governments across the country to focus on recycling to lessen the volume of wastes in sanitary landfills and discouraged land reclamation to prevent flooding like what happened when Severe Tropical Storm Paeng hit the region.

Villar appeared at the Solid Waste Management Association of the Philippines (SWAPP) 2022 Conference held in Mandurriao district on Thursday, which focused on linking the importance of proper waste management to averting disasters at the local level.

She talked about flooding in her home turf of Las Piñas City, which sits on Manila Bay, due to typhoons and rains, and how waste washed ashore.

She touted their family’s efforts in their city, including the “Sagip Ilog Para Sa Kinabukasan,” which converted waterlilies and discarded coconut husks into paper and charcoal, as well as promoting composting in household kitchens and gardens.

Villar said other local government units that are prone to flooding should emulate these barangay-based waste management practices.

On the sidelines of the convention, she told the media that because of the local programs in their city, they were able to reduce their contribution to the Metro Manila landfill in San Mateo, Rizal, by around 75 percent, but declined to cite where her data is based upon.

“I recall that in the late 1990s, it was the flooding we experienced in Las Piñas City, whenever typhoons visit, that prompted me to address the solid waste disposal challenges in our city more aggressively.  I found out that it was the waterlilies and an abundance of solid wastes that litter our 2 rivers in Las Pinas City that adds to the problem of flooding,” Villar said.

“I have been rallying the national government, LGUs, communities and the private sector to improve waste management via composting. In fact, being a Vice Chairperson of the Committee on Finance and in charge of the budgets of both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources during the preceding 18th Congress, I have persuaded the Bureau of Soil and Water Management and the Environmental Management Bureau to purchase and distribute composting facilities to local government units nationwide as a way of encouraging them to institutionalize composting as part of their efficient waste management practice,” she added.

She also touted her authorship of Republic Act No. 11898 (Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022), which lapsed into law on July 23, 2022.

The new law aims to reduce the generation of non-environment-friendly packaging, improve the recyclability or reusability of plastic packaging wastes, and promote efficient waste recovery programs aimed at preventing plastic waste from leaking into the environment.

“The globe is in the middle of a climate emergency, and not only does every individual has the obligation to reduce his or her own footprint, but we must also find strategic interventions to drastically redeem what would have been valuable materials from the waste stream.  Cradle-to-grave management of products is no longer sufficient. Responsibility must begin at product conceptualization, before it even sees production,” she said about Rep. Act No. 11898.

The bulk of her speech tackled how recycling can still help save the earth, in the context of continuous disasters hammering the country, and the capacities of the national and local governments to enable conservation and recycling programs.

“We are looking forward to a future where we will only produce products that last long, are entirely repairable, and whose materials will go right back to the factories as materials for new things once they are no longer useful.  Until then, society is operating on borrowed time for our planet,” she said.

Speaking to the media, she said rivers should be kept clean and free from solid wastes, to prevent them from overflowing and ultimately prevent flooding, chiding the government of the neighboring city of Bacoor in Cavite.

“We should expect that [typhoons] come every year, so we have to be prepared. Our rivers should be clean so that they won’t overflow. It overflows because of the silting, becoming more shallow because of the piled-up trash, so we have to dredge rivers and teach people not to throw things into the river,” she said.

“For us [in Las Piñas], even if our river is clean, the river of [Bacoor] isn’t, so the waste washes up to our area, so I think we have to start cleaning also the river of our neighbor [there],” she added.

The lady senator also voiced her opposition to land reclamation practices by the government and the private sector, which involve piling and topping rock and soil over bodies of water to extend the land area from its original and natural buildup.

In an October hearing, she blew her top over the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) after issuing permits for projects near the Manila-Cavite Expressway (CAVITEX), which stretches along the Manila Bay coast from Parañaque City in Metro Manila all the way to Kawit, Cavite.

“We should not touch our bays and oceans, because like [in Las Piñas], four of our rivers go out into Manila Bay. If they reclaim that, where do our rivers go? It would go back to us and cause flooding, so we have to be very careful about that,” she stated.