KEEPING our environment clean is the right way to start a new year. The first day of 2021 was encouraging. With not so many people blasting firecrackers, we saw fewer firecracker remnants.
With few people going out and opting to stay at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, we saw fewer disposable food containers, plastic and other packaging wastes, and food leftovers – among the common items disposed of in large quantities – scattering on the streets. It was a refreshing sight because in previous years, we witnessed the dreadful trashing of the environment on the first day of the annual Zero Waste Month in January.
Then President Benigno Aquino III through Proclamation No. 760 declared every month of January as Zero Waste Month “to guide people in changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.”
For the next New Year revelry, people should try the 3Rs – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In the midst of a changing climate, we can no longer continue maltreating Mother Nature as a limitless source of raw materials for our needs and wants, and as a vast landfill for wastes and toxics. Our wastefulness is already taking its toll on public health and the environment with garbage choking not only our communities, but even our rivers and seas. Also, waste disposal costs a huge chunk of taxpayers’ money.
The unchecked dumping of all types of trash on the streets is not only appalling and irresponsible but outright illegal. Littering, throwing, dumping of waste matters in public places such as roads, sidewalks, canals, esteros or parks, and establishment, or causing or permitting the same, is prohibited and punishable under Section 48 of Republic Act 2003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
In the unfolding era of climate change, unrestrained garbage disposal is totally unacceptable.
