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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Garbage in, garbage out By Antonio C. Abaya November 28, 2001 What is it with this country, that with its hundreds of MBAs and its liberal American-style politics and its obstreperous and free-wheeling American-style press, it cannot solve simple mundane, practical problems like the collection and disposal of garbage and the management of traffic? I recall that in the late 1980s, the Aquino Government set aside the sum of P3.2 billion for a program of solid waste management that included the construction of that monstrous facility sitting at the Coastal Road in Las Pinas, which remains largely unused, while tons of garbage lay strewn all over Metro Manila�s sidewalks, esteros and empty lots. (Coincidentally, that facility sits, cheek by jowl, right next to rows and rows of apartment flats into which the Ramos Government had poured hundreds of millions of pesos in the 1990s but which unaccountably remain unoccupied to this time, while millions of squatters live in squalor in their overcrowded colonies). Really, what is it with Filipinos? So good at analysis that lead to paralysis. Forever quarrelling with each other over everything under the sun. We have more columnists and commentators per square kilometer than any other country in this planet, who eloquently criticize everyone and everything in their daily diarrhea, but offer no solution to anything. No wonder so many of the young and even not-so-young have opted to emigrate to other countries. This country seems destined to sink under the weight of its own garbage. ***** On the one hand, Filipinos seem to be gifted with a yearning to create, through legislation, the most perfect society one can imagine. On the other, we seem to be deprived of the practical commonsense to transform that dream into a nuts-and-bolt reality.. Take the Clean Air Act, which forbids the use of incinerators to dispose of solid waste. The proponents of that law were, no doubt, propelled by the most noble of objectives, meaning, to protect the environment from the effects of global warming and the hazards of toxins inadvertently released by the burning of certain substances. Yet that very law has shut the door to one of the most efficient ways of disposing garbage, to the point where we are now gagging on it. I recall that in 1992 I was given a briefing by the Environment Department of Singapore on how that city-state disposes of its garbage. They burn it, boys and girls, and they continue to do so to this day. Their incinerators are equipped with electrostatic precipitators that remove offending particles from the gaseous discharge. Magnets remove ferrous metal residues from the burned material and the environment department sells the recovered metal to the national steel board. The resulting ash is used as filling material to reclaim land from the sea. Nothing is wasted. My point is: if incinerators are good enough for the Singaporeans, who have created the cleanest (physically and morally) country in this part of the world, why are they not good enough for the Filipinos, who have created one of the shabbiest (physically and morally)? ***** Oppositors to incinerators believe in their cause with the passion of religious zealots. Meaning, they believe that they and they alone possess the One and Only True Faith, and those who disagree with them are agents of the devil, the CIA or the profit-mad multinational corporations. This is not surprising since many, though not all, radical environmentalists were or still are also advocates of radical politics. Hence, the same missionary zeal, the same starry-eyed idealism, the same unshakeable conviction that they and they alone possess the blueprint for the Perfect Society. They could do with some humility and accept the reality that there is no perfect solution to the garbage problem, that all proffered solutions have flaws, and that practical wisdom must consist in accepting those flaws as inherent in any solution. For example, oppositors to incinerators usually, though not always, propose the composting of wet or organic waste. A few years ago, I used to compost the organic waste from our backyard garden, but soon gave it up as I ran up against the problems of where to put the waste while they were undergoing anaerobic bacterial degradation, and what to do with the compost heaps that I was accumulating fast. We have dozens of trees in our backyard: three mango, one chico, five kalamansi, four caimito, six atis, one champaca, one tamarind, eight mahogany, seven kalachuchi, two caballero, one castanas, one lychee, one duhat, five yuccas, plus assorted shrubs etc. Our daily output of dead leaves, dead branches, and dead flowers sometimes adds up to six wheelbarrows-full. There was no way we could continue composting everything and still have yardspace left for social activities. Besides, what would we do with all that compost? ***** Anti-incinerators/pro-composting advocates also forget that composting may do more harm than good. In the process of composting,, bacterial digestion breaks down the complex carbon molecules that make up all organic matter: cellulose in plant waste, protein and fats in animal waste. These complex carbon molecules break down into simpler molecules, ultimately to the simplest of them all, methane, the molecule of which has only one carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms. So composting has for its end product methane, which is a combustible gas. This is why in dumpsites like Smokey Mountain and Payatas there are occasional muffled explosions. These are accumulations of methane gas trapped in the piles of garbage and occasionally ignited by friction or heat. The scientist � I cannot recall his name at the moment - who first called attention to global warming caused by the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, has also written that methane gas is 21 times more contributory to global warming than carbon dioxide. In other words, one volume of methane gas is as harmful to the environment as 21 volumes of carbon dioxide. So those who oppose incinerators and favor composting as an alternative, on the grounds that incinerators add to the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are unknowingly pumping more methane into the same atmosphere and are harming it 21 times more with it, assuming an equal output of methane and CO2. From where I sit, the best solution to the garbage problem is to use it to generate methane and then burn the methane as fuel to generate electricity. In a future article, I will write how the city of Melbourne does just that. ***** This article appeared in the December 17, 2001 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |