Alan Gensoli

If you're entertained by this column, there must be a bug eating you up inside for the awful way our government is handling our garbage mess. Thank you for taking up this advocacy, but we need to do a lot more, for alas, that government I lament is a government BY THE PEOPLE. And there lies our task at hand. In past elections many of us supporting solid waste management momentarily put aside our advocacy to campaign for candidates we fancied, with no regard at all for our cause.We shelvedsolid waste management because it is too parochial for the glitz and glamorof national politics.We put the environment on hold. And what did that gain us? Rubbish, and more of it.Can we, for once, put our advocacy front and center of our lives and vote for it? What's the point in having an advocacy when it cannot even sway our votes?How can government take solid waste managementseriously when we don't bring the issue to the polls?There's just no green vote. It's all fluff, politicians joke. We've seen how this manner of choosing our officials has led to the pathetic state of our environment, indeed to the failed enforcement of Republic Act 9003, our solid waste management law, 12 years after it was enacted. A dozen wasted years prove we voted unwisely in past elections.This Monday, May 13, please vote for candidates friendly to solid waste management. If you don't, then you have no right to complain about unsegregated, uncollected trash. Vote green or suffer the filth for the next three years. In terse English, put up or shut up. In gentler English, you make your bed, you lie on it.

Electing leaders comes once in three years, so let us cherish the opportunity to deodorizegovernment of useless officials, and replenish it with people who are trustworthy, fearless, and most important of all, willing to take up our advocacy. Let us not forget, let us not go astray, our advocacy is solid waste management, not the hungry, not the homeless, not the sidewalk vendors, not the landless farmers, not the victims of scams, not RH Law. Though equally noble, thesehavetheir ownsupporters. Meanwhile, we support solid waste management, socome Monday, that must be uppermost in our minds and at the tip of our pens, without question or pause.

Several months back, I had the chance to visit the new sanitary landfill of Bacolod City in Brgy. Felisa. I was very disappointed though to find unsegregated trash in the landfill, something that's both wrong and illegal. But that was before Metrowaste was hired by the city to collect our garbage. With the entry of Metrowaste, I was hoping for change, that we will all be taught to segregate our trash so that only the 10% residual waste will be collected and sent to the landfill. But I remained skeptical about such change taking place, since Metrowaste is being paid by the tonnage of trash it collects. To collect mere residual waste would be antithetical to Metrowaste'sbusiness interest, wouldn't it?

Last Wednesday, April 17, at around 8am, while driving somewhere in Brgy. Villamonte, Bacolod City, I spotted a garbage truck picking up unsegregated trash. The huge dump truck was colored light blue, bore the logo of Metrowaste on the driver's door, and had the plate number RML 480. Normally, it is not easy to check if the garbage loaded on such a truck is unsegregated because its back is covered witha steel swing door. But just when I was driving by, the truck was being loaded and so the back was partially open, clearly showing unsegregated trash. I also saw yellow plastic shopping bags, something that our city ordinance has long banned. I hope that the truck drivers and garbage collectors of Metrowaste know that under Republic Act 9003, our solid waste management law, it is they who actually pick up and deliver unsegregated trash to the landfill who will be accosted, fined, and imprisoned; not the Mayor, not the Vice Mayor,not the Councilors, not even Metrowaste officials.Contrary to claim that trucks carrying unsegregated trash are no longer allowed to enter our landfill, I am inclined to believe, as my four eyes have seen,that we are still depositing unsegregated trash in our sanitary landfill in Brgy. Felisa.And that's a bad thing. The facility has so far cost us P55 Million borrowed money. If Metrowaste continues to dump 100% unsegregated trash into ourlandfill, instead of 10% residual waste only, the facility will be filled up sooner than later, and we will need to borrow millions more to expand it. The practice iswasteful. It is illegal.And it is life-threatening. Look at Rizal.

A conundrum? Here's how that works. Mosaic is a company based in Oakland, Calif. It seeks out investorsto fund the purchase and installation of solar panels in offices that have the cash flow to pay monthly solar fees, but not the CAPEX to buy the system outright. Profit is the self-interest. Clean energy makes that same profit enlightened and okay. Investors can put in as little as $25, and ROI is shy of 7%, already good in these times.

Mother Jones and OnEarthran the story of Youth Empowerment Partnership whose solar project worth $40,000 attracted 51 investors. But how can YEP, an NGO, pay Mosaic investors back? With solar power, YEP's monthly electric bill dropped from $1,350 to $150, savings that hint at high collectability. Recently, Mosaic raised $1 Million for 12 clean energy projects,just within days, and all because of enlightened self-interest. Mosaic president Billy Parish finds urgency in galvanizing the public to invest in clean energy because the growth of solar power has been slow, today accounting for no more than 0.1% of total electricity consumption in the U.S. There's another reason.

Not too long ago, I wrote about Suntech Power Holdings, a manufacturer of solar panels based in China that sold its panels at a much lower price than leaders Sanyo and Mitsubishi. I thought solar panels would fly off supermarket shelves, so to speak. But Suntech's low-price strategy backfired. With new entrants, the industry now has over capacity, too many solar panels, too few buyers. Yesterday we learned that Suntechfiled for bankruptcy. What gives? Now that we have Mosaic to deploy solar panels, we lose the low-price manufacturer. Luckily for Suntech(and the environment), Warren Buffet is looking to buy in. I hope he does.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, we associated Holy Week with the peak of summer. Not anymore. Last Wednesday I changed my FB profile picture to a shot of poinsettia blooms, which are actually autumn leaves, withered by cold weather and less sun. Friends asked if I was somewhere in the northern hemisphere. No, I was in our farm, not too far from the equator. There, I observe, poinsettias that grow profusely now bloom wildly year-round. The following day, winter showed its ugly side as hail stones, also known as frozen rain, pummeled parts of Quezon City. Glass windows of restaurants and stores were smashed. What could have triggered this alien winter invasion? What extra-terrestrial force could have induced Christmas to bloom at Easter? I do not believe that we are not aware that climate change is upon us because we talk about it almost everyday now. But that too little is done to mitigate the problem alludes to some ignorance, or attitude problem. Today worldwide, up to 97% of respected climate scientists are convinced that man is to blame for the warming of the earth in the last century. From NASA's website, a joint statement by 18 scientific associations reads: "Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver." Indeed, the mundane act of disposing unsegregated trash is blamed for methane emission, by far the most toxic greenhouse gas causing global warming. Cows burping, a major source of methane release, is blamed to carnivorous man.Climate change is staring at us and we go about our days as if nothing's the matter. It's time we stopped treating climate change as a distant phenomenon and deal with it up close, as close as the slab of steak staring at you from your dinner plate. That's my beef.