Wasted Lessons

Lessons of Ondoy and other previous calamities that brought havoc to the country seem wasted. Another typhoon named Sendong entered the country and brought another devastation and as previous calamities, people were caught unprepared resulted to high casualties. According to the local authorities, there is a high casualty because of illegal logging and mining in that area. Nature looks like taking a vengeance; flash flood carried the cut trees and served as a battering ram in destroying building and houses.

You cannot avoid to wonder if there is still a chance that people will finally change their behavior towards the environment. And accept the fact that the impact of climate change, most appropriately called "global weirding" in weather terms, is becoming clearer with each event. The 100 years floods are piling up. The storm systems are gaining in strength. The boom and bust cycles of flood and drought make old stories of "the way things are" sound like trite but frosty old memories.

Deny if you will, trees perform many important functions in the eco-system­, one of which is dealing with water. You just can't chop down millions of them in one place and expect no consequences. This is not so much a case of "Nature" out to get us, as this will be spun, no doubt. This is a direct consequence of man's actions. And, yes, once again, follow the money.

Three R

In some parts of the Philippines you will notice garbage along the highway and vacant lots. You may quickly conclude that this is because of lack of discipline of its people. This may be true to some but for others this is due to poverty. Even though local government is the one in charge of garbage collection, it is not free in some municipality, the fee range from 30 to 100 pesos. For a country wherein most of the people live on $1 dollar a day, that amount is very hard to find. They would rather buy foods than pay the fee for garbage collection. For those who cannot afford paying the fee, they have no choice but to throw their garbage anywhere possible. This garbage include some hazardous materials and chemicals such as used fluorescent tube and used diapers, posing a health risk to the people especially the young ones. Some of this garbage is also being thrown to bodies of water like river, stream and seas causing fish kills and water pollution. Some were being burned releasing toxic gases in the air.

Its baffling why in some barrios or municipalities, garbage collection is free. This will made you wonder that there is a fund being allotted for garbage collection, it so happen that when the barrio official is corrupt, they will only put this fund on their pocket and will ask their constituent to just shoulder the cost of garbage collection. Though there is a fund being allotted for barangay, it is up to the barangay official where they will use that fund. Another possible reason why they are discrepancy in garbage collection is because fund allotment differs, there are barangays which have a higher fund allotment while some have small fund allotment. The government should shoulder the cost of garbage collection if fund is not yet being allotted for this purpose, since people are already paying high taxes which are more than enough to shoulder garbage collection cost. And to make sure that the fund being given to barangay will be used for garbage collection, they should make it illegal to use it for other purposes and collecting dues to its constituents.

Some may think that waste management is not important to be given that priority in the budget. Improving garbage collection will actually save the government budget because we can save the money being allotted for health purposes. Polluted air, water and land due to garbage can cause illness to people and damage to our environment. Improper disposal of garbage can also cause flooding, because this will clog our drainage system. Government has already spent so much money preventing flood and repairing the damage cause by it. And for ordinary folks, we should do our part too; we should practice 3 R, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. By following this 3 R there will be few garbage to collect, and few garbage mean less money to be used for garbage collection.