San Carlos City: Where Flowers Bloom Even at the Dumpsite Reprint: Jo M. Clemente, Philippine Daily Inquirer with updates for WV by the same writer.
You’ve got to smell it to believe it! In San Carlos City, what used to be a stinking open garbage dumpsite lorded over by flies and worms is now a rich repository of compost. No stench, no gory picture of rotting animal carcasses, just the soiled remains of empty plastic bags embedded into the compost ready to be pulled out to be recycled elsewhere.
And yes, the city government still dumps their waste into this 2-hectare site while setting up their new Solid Waste Management Facility. But each day they throw in about two tons of garbage, they also cover these with rice hull to form windrows that measure about 8 meters high and 5 meters wide. The rice hull-covered garbage is then left to itself for six months to cleanse and transform everything biodegradable into a humus substance enough to fertilize a vegetable plot or flower garden. And indeed, patches of flower gardens welcome one at the entrance of the site.
More than a means to rehabilitate the six-year old dump before it is finally closed, San Carlos City Mayor Eugenio Lacson said they are now convinced of the rice hull technology and will adopt the same method when they finally move to their new said waste facility.
“We’re totally convinced of the technology and I believe it is just right for a city like ours, given our existing resources. It is safe and it uses indigenous materials, at the same time solves the requirements of the rice millers. Instead of burning the rice hull, they give it to us and we use it for the dump,” he said.
The rice hull method was introduced to San Carlos City by the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO) in May last year as part of its Comprehensive Solid Waste Master Plan, which the city government adopted in compliance of Republic Act 9003 or the Philippine Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.
CESO on the other hand was accessed by a Negros-based non-government organization called Genesys or Global Environment and Nature Ecosystems Society, which the city government tapped to encourage private sector participation in the endeavor.
A study undertaken by Ceso’s consultant Bill Goodings revealed that 80 percent of the city’s domestic waster is organic, but that sorting out the garbage as already thrown into the dump was impossible. Thus, they chose to compost the mixed garbage through natural aerobic process and used rice hull as treatment to bring more air into the waste and the needed “carbon” to stabilize the organic portion of these solid waste.
Aerobic bacteria are already present in any organic waste. When the pile becomes malodorous, this means that the oxygen needed by the aerobic bacteria to thrive is depleted and methane is produced.
This condition is righted by aerating the waste and adding carbon material such as rice hull to complete the aerobic process.
In three days, the 8-meter high windrows of hull-covered mixed garbage start to work as compost pile. As per the experience of San Carlos City, interior temperature of piles reach 55 degrees Celsius and in that environment, flies, weeds and other pathogens are killed and the odor diminishes to tolerable levels left alone for six months.
Edgar Lopez, an officer of the city’s General Services Department and in-charge of the project, said they stick in long mercury thermometers to take the temperature of the pile as this has a bearing on the quality of compost that can be produced. “At 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, we can produce better quality compost good for farm requirements,” he said.
Lopez also started to breed African night crawlers, an earthworm species, right at the dumpsite to support full rehabilitation of the site.
Today, even as the city government still uses the same site for their dump, there is a noticeable decline in the presence of recyclables, an improvement, they say, in the way the people of the city manage their garbage.
‘No segregation, no collection’
The City has two policies in its advocacy for zero waste.
“if they don’t segregate, we don’t collect,” said Mayor Lacson. “Their waste are left in front of their houses for a few days just to impress to the people that segregation should really start at source.”
Lacson said they also do not encourage the use of plastic garbage bags. While an ordinance is yet to be passed by the city council that would penalize non segregation of garbage, advocacy work is already being done on the Barangay level.
Genesys had been the city government’s partner in this information and education campaign that runs the entire gamut of the garbage cycle.
Princess Solis, acting executive director of Genesys, said their advocacy campaign leans toward a change in lifestyle because technical know-how can help reduce garbage. “The garbage is no longer a problem; we have to work on the people now,” she said in Filipino.
Her team employs community catalysts who conduct trainings to key individuals and leaders in a community, which in turn develop their respective Barangay plans. These plans cover the A to Z of managing their garbage. The city for its part had implemented a garbage collection system that also separates bio-degradable wastes from recyclables. Three compactor trucks go around the city daily to collect biodegradable wastes while two open trucks do the rounds for recyclable garbage at scheduled days for each part of the city.
While garbage segregation is a process yet to be perfected at source, the attempt to limit disposal to residual waste is high on the city government’s agenda. A few manifestations can already be seen.
Decline in scavenging
Rosa Java is a scavenger who scouts for recyclables and sell these to junk shops. She lives within the dumpsite compound the last three years even when it was still filthy. They ate inside mosquito nets then, to get the flies off their food. During the rainy months, worms from decaying garbage crawled up their shanties.
That’s all gone now, she said, but with it is a decline in their source of living. Rosa said they used to earn about a thousand pesos a week from the junk they were able to get from the dumpsite. Today they are lucky if they get to earn P300 for the same period.
Solis attributed to this to the improvement of the people’s knowledge about segregation. What other’s threw away in the past, they now collect themselves and sell.
Solis said they were looking at the 13 families living at the dump area as possible partners in the gathering of the plastics from the composts. These plastics will also be compressed into blocks and then sold to recycling plants.
In the meantime, the scavengers were given soft loans by the city government for use as their capital in buying the recyclables from various sources.
“In sum, what matters is what we can do well with the resources we have,” said Lacson.
Lacson, who was the city’s vice mayor for three consecutive terms before becoming its chief executive, said ‘continuity’ is also a key in local governance. “Just continue the good (policies) from a past administration and follow the development plan so that s are resources are maximized and projects are not disrupted.”
Right now, San Carlos City is a learning school for the rest of the country’s local government units, it being the first to apply rice hull technology using the windrow technique for mixed garbage in its solid waste project.
Local officials from across the country had been going to this city to look at the project – to better appreciate it – and smell the dumpsite as well. If only for this, San Carlos City is worth a visit.
Find out the decomposition time for selected solida waste. Click Here
WV Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, May 2005
No comments:
Post a Comment