IT MAY sound like an unusual suggestion, but what if we pass a law that will require local government units (LGUs) to haul garbage directly to Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) and not to sanitary landfills?
Others might say that this suggestion is impractical, because many LGUs do not even have MRFs, and many of them do not have sanitary landfills either.
But what logic are we pursuing here? Are we saying that we should not run after the LGUs simply because they do not have MRFs? And that they do not have sanitary landfills?
Is that not like saying that we should no longer run after criminals simply because our jails are already full? Or that we do not have enough policemen to run after them?
Sad to say, some of our LGU officials have not even thought of building their own MRFs, otherwise all of them would have it by now.
In much they same way, they may not have thought of building sanitary landfills, assuming they would know what that means.
It appears, however, that there are actually three points of failure here, namely the point of segregation at home, the point of bringing the recyclables to the MRF, and the point of bringing the non-recyclables to the sanitary landfills.
Perhaps I might be asking for the impossible, but what if we the taxpaying public will demand that the government should lead the way in segregation and MRF implementation?
There are more than enough military camps and school campuses where the government could lead by example in implementing the proper ways of waste management via recycling.
Understandably, it is much easier for the government to make the laws and it is harder for them to implement them. However, who else but the LGUs and the National Government Agencies (NGAs) should lead the whole country in implementing these laws?
Doing so is better than the government becoming the law breaker in contrast to their being the law maker./PN
