Dumaguete city is equipped for actualizing the zero waste program

Our present culture of utilization is unsustainable. Removing crude materials from regular spaces requires a lot of vitality and causes contamination, regardless of whether it is logging a woods, digging for minerals or boring for oil. Handling these materials requires more vitality and causes more contamination. Once they’re utilized, the products are just dumped in a landfill or devastated in an incinerator. Conversely, a zero waste method saves characteristic assets and decreases contamination from extraction, assembling and transfer. Decreasing and reusing implies less items are made, as individuals purchase less and as items are made to last. Reusing keeps trash out of landfills and incinerators and manufacturers with reused rather than crude materials to make new products. waste is the proof that we are accomplishing something incorrectly. Landfills essentially cover the evidence and incinerators (by whatever extravagant name they are called) just consume the proof.

We need to confront the genuine issue: our undertaking is to battle about utilization and its most obvious sign: the disposable ethic. Rather than endeavoring to end up more advanced about disposing of waste, we need to quit purchasing things we don’t need, and businesses need to quit making things, which can’t be reused somehow. Silliman University is taking actions and is already implementing the Zero waste program. The current president Dr. Betty Cernol-McCann said in her message that they are set “ to bring about changes in the way we deal with plastics and other wastes that we now use and dispose in our campus. ” The university is now regulating the garbage strictly to become a zero waste campus. They are discouraging people to use single-use plastics like plastic water bottles, plastic bags, and straws. Instead, they are encouraging people to bring their own water bottles, reusable containers, and to use metal or bamboo straws instead of the disposable plastic ones. (Anonymous, 2018)Cities should develop new methods to contain the dangerous effects caused by the wastes in dumpsites.

Other cities are implementing programs that would lessen non-biodegradable waste as well. Tagbilaran City, Bohol, a neighboring city, has already implemented being plastic-free. In order to do so, the local government has banned the use of plastics during Saturdays and Sundays. It officially started last June 2, 2018. All malls and other shopping centers are enforced to follow the no-plastic-bag policy which implies that they should use reusable eco-bags or paper in packaging instead of the non-biodegradable plastic bags. (Albarado, 2018). According to Emmanuel (2018), a lot of other cities in the Philippines are also practicing Zero waste, namely, Malabon and Fort Bonifacio (Taguig) in Metro Manila; Batangas City, Batangas; San Fernando, Pampanga and more. If they were able to do it, there is no doubt that Dumaguete can do it as well. Meanwhile, not only is the society presenting us with a local waste crisis, it is contributing to the global crisis. It is important to see what has caused this crisis and how a Zero Waste strategy can take an important step towards addressing the issue. We need to move from a linear society to a sustainable society. It will really take a lot of time and effort in order for zero waste to be truly realized. The government and other zero-waste advocates might be pushing zero-waste in the city but it won’t be made possible if people won’t cooperate. Let’s be realistic, some people just don’t care about their garbage, they just throw them away or improperly dispose them, especially those who are living in the unpolished sides of the city. Waste can never be totally eradicated but through efforts like reducing single-use waste consumption, proper segregation, and as simple as practicing the 5Rs, waste in the city would lessen.