Home waste management made easy

Haven’t you noticed that most of your garbage at home comes from refuse in cooking and preparing food – peeled fruits and veggies, bottles of consumed condiments, plastic containers and many more?

Some 60 percent of garbage at home is accumulated from the kitchen. So, how can we manage all this mess with a waste management system that is environmentally sound? In a recent session at the Julius Maggi Kitchen, Odette Alcantara, founding member of Mother Earth Unlimited, and a renowned environmentalist, answered the perennial problem on waste disposal.

Odette stressed that garbage disposal and waste management are two different things. Garbage disposal is simply getting rid of your waste, throwing them all in one place. This attitude creates the present problem of enormous garbage, landfills and stink in towns and cities.

Meanwhile, waste management is simply putting garbage in the right places: back to Mother Earth (by composting) and back to Father Factory (by recycling and reusing). This should be the golden rule in preventing waste from becoming garbage, Odette said.

Waste management is actually an easy task. The first and foremost thing to do is to segregate your waste, from biodegradable and non-biodegradable. You can create a compost pit in your backyard for your biodegradable waste – waste that decay in soil.

If you live in a condominium or apartment and have very small space for a pit, you can buy pots and create your compost from them. Upon segregating, collect your biodegradable waste and pile them up in one place. All you need to do is to put soil in a pot, add your waste and bury them again in soil. In a few weeks or even days, you will have fertilized soil, which you can use over and over again in composting. You can even plant in these pots and create a beautiful garden!

Recycling and reusing are helpful for your non-biodegradable waste. You can recycle old bottles, cans and jars. You can even sell them in junk shops.

"It pays to invest in cleanliness. If we manage our waste properly, we eliminate all other major problems like floods, diseases and disorderliness," Odette emphasized. "In this way, we do not only contribute to the government in solving the garbage problem, we also help in saving Mother Earth," she added.