NO HOLDS BARRED

Ike Señeres
A green economic order

A clean environment is good for agriculture. It also promotes livelihood, because a clean environment opens up new spaces for growing all kinds of products that could be processed and sold. What is even better is to have green agriculture, the kind that is friendlier to the environment and is more sustainable.

Green agriculture also promotes good health, because it produces safer and healthier food to eat. Provided that we could produce our own food for our own consumption, it also promotes food security, because we will become more independent of foreign food sources. And to that our prospective savings in foreign exchange, which is of course good for our economy.

I am told that it is now a growing trend in the United States for people to grow their own food, so that they will know that the food they are eating is safe. Believe it or not, the rich people in the Americas are now paying others to grow food for them, if they could not grow it themselves.

Until recently, we only had to worry about the safety of foods coming from China . Who would imagine that now we have to worry about the safety of foods coming from the Americas? Who would have guessed that the day would come when pistachios would become dangerous food to eat?

As it is now, our government bureaucracy is fragmented, because there is a specific agency that is in charge of environment, agriculture, health, and so on and so forth. Will the day ever come when there would be a government task force or something that could complement and integrate all of these concerns?

I do not know when that day would come, but first things first; I think that the government should formally declare its support for a new Green Economic Order that would support the integration of clean environment, green agriculture and food safety, among others.

It’s good that the government appears to be doing something about climate change, or at least it appears that they want to do something. Meanwhile, waste segregation still appears to be a distant goal in most places here, and it seems that there is no single globally compliant landfill in sight. Up to now, our government officials still seem to be confused about the differences between a landfill and a dumpsite.

As I see it now, putting up materials recovery facilities (MRFs) is a more doable option compared to putting up real compliant landfills. It also makes more economic sense, because it would really be stupid to bury recyclables if there is a way to recover and sell them.

Until now, MRFs are viewed as components of dumpsites or landfills, based on the logic perhaps that some of the recyclables could be recovered instead of dumping them or burying them. As soon as possible, the government should adopt the more practical view that MRFs could be more complete in themselves, meaning that the majority of recyclables could really be recovered, such that there would practically be no more need to dump or bury these valuable materials.

It’s no rocket science really, but it has been proven in many places that it is really possible to build and install sewage treatment plants in small or smaller communities, and not necessarily building it for big or bigger towns or cities. I really think that this should now become a mandatory rule for developers, if it is not yet imposed.

In many foreign countries, the people are required to grind or shred kitchen waste before throwing these into their kitchen sinks. The kitchen sink then goes into the sewerage system, where these presumably end up in sewage treatment plants. This is not an issue here, because there are no sewage systems in most places to begin with.

Do you know that there is already a technology that converts kitchen waste into liquid natural gas (LNG)? Is this not a perfectly desirable goal, to convert there useless wastes into a very useful gas that could lower our household fuel costs? Down the line, the technical agencies such as the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Science & Technology (DOST) should really put their acts together to turn environment problems into money making opportunities for our people.

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