By KATHLEEN T. OKUBO
www.nordis.net

When I go to the Baguio market for the week’s supply because of the usual packaging system I bring home more than a dozen plastic bags of different sizes. As is practised at home each clean bag is rolled and folded and kept in its usual bag. Of the dozen or so, during the week after, my household would be able to re-use only 2 or three of those bags as garbage bags. Most of it are added to a sack full of other plastic bags that would be sent off to the garbage truck that visits our barangay only once a week.

From the house to the jeepney stop I would walk some one hundred meters, pass by about a dozen houses and some 20-35 pieces of plastic bags strewn along the road. Each house clean their frontage every morning still in the afternoon one would see it littered again with candy or food wraps and other plastic bags. If this streetside garbage is left alone to nature to dispose, in my side of town, it would eventually go down the Gallano river and somehow finally end up in the Lingayen Gulf. If it does not get caught along the way to pile-up by the riverbank. It is said that it takes some 65 years for polyethelene to biodegrade. Plastic in the ground also adds to other accumulated toxins there.

Just think if every single person in Baguio, say some 200,000 thousand people throws away five plastic bags a day, that would make 1,000,000 pieces a day. If it was a very irresponsibe 200,000 people, none of them should complain about clogged drainage, flooding (5000 feet above sea level) leukemia, cancer or poisoning.

On the northside of town, is the Balili river, out on the southside is the Bued river and on myside is the Gallano. If like the Mayor of La Trinidad we would have a walk through these rivers just by the sight of it, Baguio and the adjoining Benguet is fast losing its beauty and sweet piney air that a million tourists a year come for.

On the other hand, the drainage of our City is again on the peak of its use now – the rainy season. The time our road caretakers have the penchant to do regular highway repairs at this most difficult time is a curse. This time people pray they would also repair and improve the road drainage system too, regularly, because it is on this season that our roads become rivers when it rains. Then the newly rehabilitated road shall then become a river bed. When that happens every driver and commuter lets out a curse. Please direct this complaint or ‘unintentional’ curse to our government especially where they decide to do the road works during the rainy season.

Of course the drain waters of Baguio run down the Balili, Bued, and the Gallano. Along with the rushing waters are all those plastic bags and garbage. If it gets clogged, water will always find the way out and as usually happens the escaping water would flood or dig out a landslide wherever it is held back. People call this event a disaster, for lack of foresight.

Sewage, that stink and the black water that carries all that pee and the poo along with the grime and the goo generated by a city full of people. Some forty years or so ago the Japanese “aid” planners gave Baguio funds to repair the sewage system and build a sewage treatment plant. People were harshly displaced from their gardens and homelots and a large round cement cystern was built then put to sleep for about twenty years or so. Then the city decided to ask for funds again to pick up the project and finish it. One Japanese engineer assigned to see that it gets done (I believe they did not trust the politicians too so they watched it.) one time announced that the treatment plant was to serve 90% of households in the City. That was twenty years ago when the number of households was but one third or lesser of what it is now. Just imagine where the rest of that pee and poo, grime and goo of the present population go now, especially with the present capacity of the waste management system in the city.

That muck may get caught with all that plastic we throw out every day to fill the drainage system and overflow along the road-river-canal when it rains. Yuuckh! Let us stop using plastic bags now and greatly reduce the non-biodegradable garbage we bring out every day, and help stop adding poison to our environment, and help protect our river banks from eroding. Support our city council ban the use of plastic bags in groceries and in the market. # nordis.net