Firms with more waste ‘should be taxed more’

CEBU, Philippines – An environmentalist lawyer has urged the Mandaue City Council to impose heavy taxes on businesses that generate more waste.

"I've already recommended to the Solid Waste Management Committee that we levy carbon tax. For garbage of 1.5 kilograms per week, that's free. But in excess of that, then they must pay," said Ben Cabrido during an appearance before the City Council last Wednesday.

Cabrido, who is also a member of the Solid Waste Management Committee, was invited by the council to personally report his performance as the city consultant on environmental protection.

And while it could be advantageous to the city to privatize garbage collection, the environmentalist lawyer told the council that will not solve the problem on garbage, especially that the city must adhere to the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003) which mandates to recycle and lessen the garbage in all local government units in the country.

"There is no need to privatize the garbage collection. Polluters must pay. Because why (do) big waste generators pay the same taxes the small households are paying? They should be charged more. Because we also spend so much on garbage collection," he said.

The city generates an average of 250 tons of waste every day.

He said he already raised this idea to Mayor Jonas Cortes but it was "shut down by big contractors here."

Cabrido said the city should also "strengthen" its City Environment and Natural Office to implement this national law on solid waste management.

He said the present situation is that the city relies more on the barangays in collecting and disposing of garbage when under  RA 9003, the barangays should only be in charge with segregating recyclables from the collected waste and the city has to get the residuals to be disposed to the sanitary landfill.

"Ang city pasagdan lang ang barangay. Gatuo ta ang barangay mo-handle tanan. No, ilaha lang ang recyclable, ang mga residual ug bulky waste sa city na. Sayop nang ang barangay mao'y mohatud sa basura sa landfill," he said.

He explained that under the present setup, the barangays are having too many things under their care that they can no longer implement the law. He said if the city does its job as mandated by RA 9003, then the barangays will have time to concentrate on waste reduction and ask for frees from polluters. (FREEMAN)