DENR’s trash-for-cash campaign goes nationwide

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Environment and National Resources (DENR) and the Department of Education (DepEd) are taking the government’s highly-praised recycling campaign involving public school students to a national scale. 

The two departments have partnered with the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) for the implementation of the National Ecosavers Program (NEP) in more than 1,500 municipalities all over the country. 

Launched in Metro Manila last month, the NEP is a program in which students from public schools take the initiative and receive tangible benefits such as cash and school supplies for their recycling efforts. 

DENR Secretary Ramon J. P. Paje, representing NEP partner agencies, recently signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the LMP, represented by its president Mayor Donato Marcos of Paombong, Bulacan, to set in motion a nationwide “trash-for-cash” initiative. 

“The agreement will serve as a blueprint for upscaling the NEP to the national level to ensure its institutionalization and sustainability down to the municipal level,” Paje said. 

The NEP was first implemented in 742 public elementary and secondary schools in the National Capital Region in the hope of reducing some 8,000 tons of garbage collected every year from schools and homes in the metropolis. 

Participating students were each issued an Ecosavers Club Passbook, which contains the equivalent points they receive for whatever they recycle.

They either get school supplies or cash in exchange for the recyclables they turn in to their schools. Selected recyclers and junk shops pick up the recyclable materials. 

The DENR, which has allocated P50 million for the program’s rollout, is the agency in charge with the DepEd training the teachers and principals in the particulars of the program. 

According to Paje, the NEP is another solid expression of the government’s “laser-like focus” to widen the access of the marginalized sector to the benefits now being reaped from the fiscal and environmental reforms pursued under the administration of President Benigno Aquino III. 

“The NEP affirms that clean governance results in a clean and safe environment,” Paje said during the MOA signing, which coincided with the LMP general assembly held in Manila Hotel recently.

 Paje told local executives that NEP is a venue for them to play their role in the enforcement of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, “with immediate benefits for public school students, especially in poor municipalities.” 

He said the agreement places a strong emphasis on the role of municipal mayors in ensuring NEP’s sustainability and institutionalization on a national scale by way of legislative and operational support in the local level.

“The LMP and the DENR share so many common grounds in good governance, and this effort amplifies this commonality we enjoy,” Paje said, noting that the DENR has been making headway in mainstreaming poverty alleviation and good environmental governance in over 600 municipalities nationwide through the NEP and the National Greening Program. 

Under the MOA, the DENR will mobilize its regional officers at the provincial level  down to the municipal level for the promotion of the NEP, and will train municipal executives in charge of implementing the NEP within their respective localities. 

The DepEd, on the other hand, will activate all its division superintendents throughout the country to conduct NEP trainings and informational campaign efforts in coordination with their DENR and LMP counterparts. 

The division superintendents are also tasked to issue circulars to all public elementary and secondary schools for NEP’s implementation.