photos by Eileen Juan GreyThis is what it looks like along the floodway. The blurred photo is just to show the length of it. This is refuse from the flood; it doesn't even show trash from relief goods. Imagine the styrofoam food containers, noodle packages, cans, plastic bag upon plastic bag. Though there is a need to get things out quickly and cheaply, there is a price to pay for it and we will pay again and again for fast and cheap.
It may take a little bit more time to wrap food in banana leaves, but the long-term effects are worth it. It may cost a bit more to purchase bayongs and other reusable bags, but we always have to take the long view. The extra time and centavos will seem like nothing compared to yet another disaster caused by even more garbage. If you just HAVE to send plastic out, at least put a tag on each bag that says: ANG PLASTIC BAG NA ITO AY MAARING GAMITIN ULIT. ANG PAGTAPON NITO AY SANHI NG PAGBARA AT PAGBAHA. SALAMAT SA INYONG TULONG.
Even as we help others today, let us prevent another disaster waiting to happen. Just look at the photos. It's already upon us.
2 comments:
This is sad. We Filipinos are not and I think will never be disciplined enough about keeping our environment clean and maintain a clean hygiene. This is one reason that hinders me to retire there.
I live just a few meters from the big Pasay Public Market and every weekend I do my daily marketing there. For years, I have always been astonished and appalled at how much plastic bags are used by the vendors to wrap their produce with: from fish, to dried peanuts, to even bottles of suka and patis. I simply got fed up with getting all these small bags that more than half my own garbage consists of plastics - small non-decomposing materials that eventually clog our sewers and contributes to much of flooding and horrific trash.
A few years back, I started to use re-usable (I call it) 'palengke' bags made from old sugar sacks sewn together. I have been using them whenever I buy my daily palengke needs. I get these sacks from a sugar dealer across the street who'd sell them in bundles to rag-makers. I also had a local tailor sew these bags for me and whenever I can, I also give them out. The bags are dirt-cheap and re-usable. It brings me a smile when I see them used by those I gave them out to.
My regular 'suki' have known me to not accept what I buy from them if wrapped in plastic. I also bring newspaper sheets in case I buy nuts or other dry goods (I asked the ladies to pack them in it instead of those small see-through plastic bags) and always remind them that it's actually cheaper to wrap them in old newspaper instead of buying those plastics. Am glad to say that at least a couple of these stalls have begun using old news sheets instead of those plastics. I don't go about making lectures, but whenever I can in the palengke, I simply tell a vendor whose plastic wrapper I return to him/her, that whatever we throw away, it will come back to us... and those plastics sure have a nasty way of coming back.
It's not much of an effort what I do. As a matter of fact, what I do is too tiny. But if a lot of these 'tiny actions' are multiplied to hundreds or thousands... imagine how much we can all save. Imagine if those piles of trash and plastics that clog the floodgates become a thing of the past. it can be a nicer world indeed.
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