ENVIRONMENT WATCH

Recycling keeps Santiago farms fertile

SANTIAGO CITY – Tons and tons of biodegradable garbage collected daily from 23 of the city’s 37 villages are converted into organic fertilizer for use in Santiago’s 7,700-hectare rice farms.

"Only biodegradable wastes can be converted into organic fertilizers. The non-biodegradable ones are either recycled or thrown at the city’s dump in Barangay San Jose," said engineer Orlando Tesoro, Santiago City’s environment and natural resources officer.

The organic fertilizers produced from waste recycling are distributed by the city agriculture office to the schools and farmers, Tesoro said. Since the launching of the "Quick Turnaround" rice-planting program in the city, the participating farmers have been receiving subsidized organic fertilizers from the city government.

Equipped with a set of four composting cylinders, one screener, and one hammer mill, the material recovery facility located in the compound of the city environment and natural resources office in Barangay Victory Norte, converts the biodegradable garbage into organic fertilizers.

Of the 11 trucks collecting garbage in the city, three are tasked to collect the biodegradable wastes. The others gather the non-biodegradable garbage.

Tesoro said the composting system consumes some 100 kilowatts of electricity during a five-day composting period. Every batch of garbage yields an average of 60 (40-kilo) bags of fertilizers in five days.

Some 50 tons of mixed garbage are collected daily in the city, and 23 tons are placed in biodegradable cylinders. These are mostly coconut husks that weigh an average of 12 tons. The rest consists of spoiled fruits and vegetables collected from the city’s public market. "With the recycling process, we keep our city clean and we also enrich our farms where we grow organic vegetables," Mayor Amelita Sison-Navarro said.

Tesoro said, however, that the major problem in the garbage collection is the failure of the residents to follow the waste-disposal guidelines. He noted that the city’s environmental ordinances are violated by city residents, especially those at the city public market.

"The common violation is the non-segregation of the biodegradable from the degradable wastes, and this adds difficulty in the classification of the wastes by our garbage collectors. Worst, those who do not have trash bags simply throw their garbage into the sewerage canals," Tesoro lamented.

To address these problems, Mayor Navarro launched a city-wide information drive in all schools and barangays. The objective is to educate everyone on proper garbage disposal. "If violators continue to disobey the law, their garbage will not be collected to penalize them," the lady mayor warned. -- CP