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UPSET by
the rising prices of commodities, a president—or so the
joke goes—at one time asked his socioeconomic planning
secretary to explain the problem.
The
socioeconomic planning secretary told the president that
more people are buying these commodities, thus
outstripping supply. “A classic example of the
operations of the law of supply and demand, Mr.
President,” he said. The president answered: “Then, I
should ask Congress to repeal that law.”
The
provisions of the country’s Clean Air Act and the Solid
Waste Management Act on waste management somehow mirror
this kind of joke foisted upon us by well-meaning
individuals blinded by their lack of understanding of
the dynamics of the policy issue. That explains why, as
pointed out in last week’s editorial, we are
experiencing a waste-management crisis, manifested in
the accumulation of untreated, unprocessed biomedical,
toxic and hazardous waste in the environment.
This
lack of understanding clearly manifested itself early in
the day with the passage of the Clean Air Act in June
1999, which banned incineration but allowed pagsisiga
or the “traditional” small-scale burning of waste,
including agricultural waste.
Analysts
then expressed fears that the new law actually
encouraged open burning of garbage, including toxic and
hazardous wastes, since the vague definition provided by
Section 20 of the Clean Air Act suggested that burning
waste is actually fine, provided it is done in an open,
decentralized, small-scale manner—an activity that could
easily fit as pagsisiga for “community and
neighborhood sanitation.”
Open
burning or pagsisiga is actually an environmental
planner’s worst-case scenario as incomplete combustion
in this process implies that cancer-causing substances
are generated right smack in the community.
Indeed,
people started burning their garbage right in their
backyards after the closure of many dumps, as local
government units either failed to secure funds for
conversion of these dumps into engineered landfills or
failed to get the land where landfills could be
constructed. Well, they did it because the Clean Air Act
actually allowed them to do so.
Realizing their mistake, “environmentalists” and
legislators tried to “correct” the issue by completely
banning all waste combustion under the Ecological Solid
Waste Management Act of 2000. They probably hoped that
legislating away the burning of waste could banish the
problem. The garbage crisis got worse, however,
especially after the Metro Manila Development Authority
failed to get adequate landfill spaces after the closure
of the Payatas dump.
And
while the brouhaha over the municipal solid-waste
management is brewing, companies, hospitals and
processing plants generating industrial waste,
biomedical waste, and toxic and hazardous waste are
either storing their refuse on-site for future disposal
when a proper facility is available, or outsourcing
their disposal to private contractors while hoping that
such private firms have what it takes to handle them.
Looking
at the actions of some “environmentalists” who lorded it
over the crafting and passage of the solid-waste
management law, one can’t help but suspect that many of
them were not doing their advocacies in good faith.
Naturally, when thermal technologies are banned, the
next viable option could be engineered landfills. But
when LGUs tried to look for landfill spaces, many in the
same network of “civil-society” groups dabbling in
environmentalism also opposed landfills, citing certain
environmental risks. The only correct option, they say,
is “zero waste,” as if it’s actually possible to do so.
Well,
“zero-waste management” is actually possible in small,
isolated villages producing a few kilograms of organic
waste. But it certainly wouldn’t work in megacities
producing tons of municipal, industrial, and toxic and
hazardous wastes. They missed this perspective because
when legislators and “environmentalists” were crafting
the laws, they didn’t bother to check the markets for
recyclable materials.
In fact,
they didn’t know at all the characteristics of Metro
Manila’s waste stream. They didn’t know how much
percentage is economically viable for recycling. They
didn’t know who the buyers and sellers are and how much
are being transacted in these recycling markets. They
simply assumed that mandating recycling and reuse would
automatically solve the problem like magic. Had they
known these basic facts, they would have known the
enormity of the problem and acted accordingly.
And the
fatal flaw is the lack of understanding value and social
use of land. The Philippines is a land-scarce country.
Without resorting to land-saving waste-management
options offered by thermal technologies and
waste-to-energy plants, Philippine cities will have to
gobble up huge tracts of land for landfills and dumps,
thus posing strong competition for other uses like
agriculture, forestry, industry and socialized housing.
This
partly explains the pervasive Nimby (not in my backyard)
syndrome. Certainly, it is hard to convince communities
to host a landfill or a dump, knowing that such a
“special land use” would destroy land values.
That is
why other countries adopt an integrated waste-management
program that allows for a hierarchy of options covering
waste generation (minimize, reuse, recycle); storage;
collection; processing, treatment and recovery; and
disposal.
For
instance, if thermal facilities (assuming adequate
environmental standards) were available to handle what
cannot be recycled (including biomedical, industrial and
other toxic and hazardous waste), Metropolitan Manila
can reduce the volume of waste by 90 percent.
The
residual waste, or the ashes that could be made even
safer to handle through vitrification, could be disposed
of in monofills.
Compared
to landfills that occupy hundreds of hectares, monofills
need only a few hectares, thus saving a lot of land for
other more socially beneficial uses. Equipped with
liners and proper engineering design, environmental
risks such as leaching could be eliminated. This way,
the Nimby syndrome could be avoided.
This is
what land-scarce countries in
Europe do. This flexibility of options is not currently available
to us in the
Philippines
because our legislators chose to craft our policy with
their eyes closed. If legislators won’t undo our
mistakes, we are stuck with this garbage forever. |
