the discipline of a community in terms of waste management cannot be assessed on the looks of the main streets of the city. In Davao City, the cleanliness of lots of highways can be accounted to paid street sweepers. Thanks to them, the city looks quite livable and comfortable. Of course, they have work to do thanks to the continuous mindless throwing of garbage by people - may it be by throwing candy wrappers out of moving vehicles, throwing biscuit wrappers while walking on the sidewalks, or leaving behind seemingly useless items.
i don't exactly know how the human mind works, but trashes left anywhere and everywhere are not a very beautiful sight to look at. Point is, let us be mindful of the things we dispose of. We constantly promote tourism in the internet and on TV, but our actions are not very tourist-friendly at all, not even children-friendly!
For beginners, the first step is to throw garbage at the designated sites. In other words, avoid throwing garbage anywhere. In our barangay, for example, households usually dispose house garbage at 8-9pm at the garbage collection areas near their houses. The garbage trucks usually do their rounds and collect those compiled wastes at 9-10pm every day.
Next step would be to reduce waste volume. There are lots of ways to do this. The easiest to do is composting. Avoid throwing fruit peelings, dried leaves and twigs, and the like into the garbage bins. Instead, bury them in the soil in pots, in sacks filled with soil, or better yet, in your compost pit. You may also give away left overs to your pets or to leftover collectors (lamao collectors). Leftover collectors usually give the leftovers they've collected to their pet pigs. Or you may also bury your leftovers along with your fruit peelings. This way, you do not only reduce waste volume, but you also contribute less to the foul smell in garbage bins. And i highly discourage burning of wastes; it obviously contributes to air pollution.
In addition to the above-mentioned methods of waste volume reduction, let us try choosing wisely the things we buy. We like to buy junk foods. And we are very much aware that most of them are made of some kind of foil, and this foil as you may observe, is made up of different layers of material. When you account for all the junk foods eaten per day (which is also very unhealthy), and all the wrappers thrown per day, it very much makes up a large bulk of trashes. Being a consumer must not compromise our task as stewards of the environment. Again, choosing the things we buy and decreasing the amount we throw away should be the first step to waste management. Unfortunately, as most of us know, it is the hardest.
Another thing, we must also practice waste segregation. Even if we have to throw things away, it is very much helpful to garbage collectors if we sort them. For instance, one could throw papers separately from plastics by putting each in different plastic bags. In this way, we could also actually help those people who make a living by garbage scavenging. If you come out at night in the city, you could observe some children or old men looking for useful stuff in garbage bins that could be sold to junk shops. Theirs is a tough job. And so, as i've mentioned, one way of helping them is by garbage segregation. Knowing that there are people who delve into garbage bins every night, perhaps we should also do our part in providing them with cleaner garbage that we throw everyday. We must also be concerned with their health, you know.
From everyone who has been given much, much will be required (Lk 12:48).
If we aim for development, we must take cleanliness seriously (and punctuality). ;)
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