Where do you throw your thrash?

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Tuesday. September 12, 2017
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THE INUNDATION of some streets in Iloilo City on Saturday and Sunday (Sept. 9 and 10) due to the heavy rains again bared our city’s chronic battle with reckless waste disposal.

“We have gathered plastic garbage in the drainage system at the Iloilo Terminal Market or Super and Iloilo Central Market, so we are appealing to our vendors to as much as possible do not throw plastic garbage in our drainage system,” said Acting Mayor Jose Espinosa III yesterday.

He’s right. The remorseless dumping of garbage in the streets and waterways aggravate floods triggered by the city’s poorly built and planned drainage system. If our drainage system is clogged with trash, rainwater will not drain fast enough to the Iloilo River.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand the need to keep waterways free of debris to allow the water to freely flow and minimize flooding, but many have yet to realize that what we recklessly throw on the ground or estero – such as discarded plastic bags, packaging items, diapers, clothes, tsinelas and other waste materials – will come back to haunt and harm us.

Throwing garbage in the streets and waterways is a filthy habit. The public should break away from such reckless practice. Especially in households, people can segregate their discards to facilitate the reusing, recycling and composting of waste materials.

We now know how plastic bags are exacerbating our garbage woes and how illegally thrown plastic discards are adding to our suffering in times of floods and weather disturbances. Let us shun all forms of littering and dumping, reduce trash and make it a habit to separate discards at source for reusing, recycling and composting. Keeping our city flood-free needs public participation.
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