8- Tips to Go Green

Segregate wastes. Have separate receptacles for compostables like kitchen wastes and dried leaves; recyclables like paper, plastic and glass; and other wastes for garbage collection/dump. Label each receptacle and make sure that you tell your household members about it.

If you do not segregate wastes, recycling/reuse is futile. All wastes just end up in the landfills.

7- Tips to Go Green

Promote organic fertilizer. Compost dried leaves, kitchen wastes, pet wastes and other organic matters. If you have no plants or garden, you can always give these to others who can use these wastes as organic fertilizer. The less chemical fertilizers farms use, the better for the soil and for us. 

In some communities, there are also regular collectors of kitchen left-over/wastes (kanin-baboy), which are used to supplement feeds for home-raised pigs. Support their livelihood by giving your kitchen wastes.

3- Tips to Go Green

Re-use detergents and water. In doing laundry, use a semi-automatic washing machine, which allows you to reuse the detergents and rinse water. Avoid using automatic washing machine, which discards all detergents and water automatically. The detergents can be used three times or more. First, for the white clothes, then the colored clothes, then for rugs or rags, and finally, it can be used to clean up the driveways, pathways, and floors. You can use the rinse water in the same way just like the detergents. In addition, you can use the rinse water to water the lawn, trees or plants that are not so sensitive to this type of water.

Don’t wash clothes in small loads. Try to wash these by batches or full load depending on the capacity of your washing machine. Remember that you are using the same amount of detergents and water per load.

2- Tips to Go Green

Sort and reuse plastic bags. Don't just throw these away as litters. You can facilitate reuse by sorting the plastic bags according to size: Small, Medium, Large and Very Large. Use four properly labeled old sacks or  bags to easily segregate plastic bags at home. Remember it is difficult to reuse if you don’t sort. This can save you from buying garbage bags and new plastic bags.

This will also reduce clogging of canals and drainage, and flooding, as plastic bags and wrappers are found to be the major causes of these problem in most urban areas.   

My personal home experience in waste segregation, waste minimization and composting

To practice what I preach, I tried to do waste segregation and composting at home. My idea is to collect all dried leaves that fell from our mango and avocado trees, coconut and other plants. To speed up the process, I tried burning bulky coconut leaves and voluminous dried leaves and twigs once a week. The ashes and charcoal are then mixed with fresh organic litters like dogs’ popooh and kitchen wastes, and finally layered with garden soil including all earthworms and other microorganisms in it. The mixture is collected in sacks and watered once a day to maintain moisture that is conducive for the earthworms to grow and do their thing. Then these are left to decompose for about a couple of months, and voila, I have a super enriched bio-char soil, which I used for our small garden. Our household waste was also reduced from 6-7 plastic bags to 2-3 plastic bags weekly.

Sounds perfect but reality always sets in. As people always say, talk is cheap. Our neighbors have different ideas. One complained that the leaves from our trees are a constant source of wastes in their front street as wind carries the dried leaves in their frontage, and they have to sweep these leaves time and again. Although they do not complain about parking under the shade of trees, despite it is a bit far from their house. Another complained about the smell of our dogs’ litters, as if we are the only ones in the neighborhood that own dogs which wander the streets 24/7 like askals. To avoid silly argument, I cleaned up after our dogs, and as well other neighbors’ dogs. In fact, I collect any popooh and dried leaves that I can find in front of our house and beyond, and use these as fertilizers. Then another complaint followed: the sacks of organic wastes and mixtures in front of our house are so unsightly!

No wonder waste segregation, waste minimization and composting are hitting so many snags. It is easier to gather all kinds of unsorted wastes in plastics bags, and throw these away or have these collected by garbage truck weekly. That was what my neighbors are doing for so long and nobody is complaining… perhaps until we run out of dump sites or land fill. Who really cares by then?

The problem must have been alarming that no less than DENR Secretary Paje is appealing to parents to teach children on proper waste segregation. But the prejudicial question is: Who is going to teach the parents first?

Paje appeals to parents to teach children on proper waste segregation