Waste not, want not

Can you imagine how much waste every person throws away and which becomes the problem of waste disposal companies? I recently discussed the country’s big waste problem with “Ms. Garbage” herself, Olive Puentespina of Davao Thermo Biotech Corporation (DTBC) – the company that helps pick up food waste from fast food companies as well as manufacturers of various food items and even poultries – yes, because chickens shed feathers and that is protein waste, too.

Every food production involves waste because we cannot use 100 percent of a product. Commissaries throw food waste, dressing plants throw chicken feathers and manufacturers throw expired goods. Can you imagine who has to deal with all those unavoidable excesses? We learned so much about this other side of manufacturing when we talked to Olive, who graphically explained what can be done to various types of wastes.

When food is past its expiry date, who deals with it? We simply throw it away, but someone has to either put it in a landfill or convert it to usable products. But landfills are finite. It costs millions to open landfills only for them to be filled with otherwise reusable or convertible waste. Olive tells us only diapers and sanitary pads should go to landfills. Other food wastes must degrade organically, if segregated and disposed of in compost heaps. Otherwise, they take up space in landfills meant for the “unrecyclable.”

But here’s the catch. You see waste segregating bins in public places like airports, right? Well, I watched a maintenance person open the segregating bins, take the trash from all three containers and put them in just one big trash bag. So what’s the point of segregation, if the final collection will be just one receptacle? Is it a compliance thing to have segregation, only for them to be collected as one kind of waste? Or are we teaching the public about waste segregation and hopefully let them live a life segregating recyclables from returnables and organic waste? There is a law for waste segregation, but how many companies do it?

There are many issues about waste disposal and this needs solutions that start at home. First, we must segregate food products, wrappers, plastic and paper and then dispose of them in our community system. In a condominium, for example, every trash bin must be segregated and then also disposed of properly, with compost going to community gardens.

In single detached homes, do sort plastic and paper, and food waste. Start with a compost pail as we did. I now collect from two households and I have heaps of compost curing in the farm. I hope to convince my neighbors to do the same. We have effectively reduced our trash for landfills to about a tenth of what we used to throw, and that is a lot.

Olive prays for local government units (LGUs) to be more conscious of their waste disposal systems. From the smallest unit of the home, to a village to a whole city, LGUs must help private citizens who wish to contribute to solving the country’s waste problems. What is your local executive doing to help civil society organizations (CSOs)? There is money in waste collection – not just in garbage trucks, but in disposing of them through Olive’s company. She pays P1.00/kilo to CSOs and one ton is P1,000.00 earned by the CSO. Easy peasy, easy money if you start waste segregation and look for efficient ways to collect waste.

But it all starts at home. We should be using less or no plastic, or at least dispose of them separately from brown paper and cardboard (which we use in composting). In composting we cannot dispose of fish bones, meat scraps, shrimp heads. Just fruit and vegetable discards and organic waste like brown cardboard can go into these heaps. Buy or convert a pail as your compost collection bin. Get compost filler (made from compost) to spread over the fresh waste to prevent it from smelling, and you should be on your way to making your own compost and soil.

We told Olive not to get frustrated as it may take a whole generation to change the mindset of citizens, but they will soon change. If children grow up in an eco-conscious home, they too will avoid taking home excess paper and trash. I am happily observing that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are now more eco-conscious citizens. It becomes their lifestyle and we may soon feel the change slowly but surely.

In the meantime, be conscious of how you dispose of your trash because someone down the line has to figure out how to deal with it. For example, companies from the get-go must include waste disposal in their costing of goods for sale. The reason waste is not collected is because companies did not provide a cost for them in the first place. If all manufacturers put a cost on waste disposal (a certain small percentage would suffice), they can pay people like Olive to deal with their trash. Logistics and science cost money, and someone has to pay for it.

Companies must impute cost of waste, expired goods and excess production in product costing so they need not think twice about waste disposal. Yes, there ought to be a law (again!) because people do not know what waste does until you see the flooded streets and clogged esteros. Let’s not even discuss flood control anymore. Let’s control what we can – and that is our own waste products. The waste of our homes, our companies and our communities.

Give it a thought. What excess, waste products or discards does my company or business have? Who can use my discards? Reflecting on these may give us some bright ideas or solutions to our waste problems. It is not enough the trash gets collected. We need to pay someone to make it go to the right places. If every home and business did this, we would waste not and want not.