REUNIONS, HERITAGE and the FUTURE

As vacations come and go on the month of April to May and the Christmas celebration, weddings, reunions, festivals, or tours to the cool Cordillera Mountains, streams or rivers emerge. Radio stations, social networks and text messages are full of announcement for these lines of activities.

As for weddings, we have to be prepared for gifts and donations for the church and of course the married couples. You also have to be prepared with sayings or family advice and love songs dedicated to the couples to start up their married life.

For reunions, it is important that we know our origin. Know our family and clan history, culture, tradition and other practices. You should also be familiar with our folk songs and dances. There are customs that are passé but this will have to be reformed and corrected. But still there are many old ways of life that are inherited from our ancestors that are confined to teachings of the Ten Commandments and the Law of Nature.  

It is our heritage that make us a people and as individuals. A saying goes that “when you don’t know your origin, you may not know where to end.”  

For festivals or ecotours, there are agencies and organizations involved in the promotion of these events. The promotion of our tourism destinations, culture and traditions should be a concern to the community such that the balance in environmental issues should be a matter of concern.

Whether the events are for family affair, solidarity affair or business affair, these events are commendable as it directs our lives to a right destiny as we invoke the Guidance and Blessings of Our Almighty Creator and that these events be successful and fulfilled.

 
For this planet that we make use and take advantage of, it is our responsibility to protect, nurture and preserve it. We take advantage of the activities we do every day and in any event. To the observations by concerned people, our planet is deteriorating as the days go by. There are sectors in our society that don’t care of where we came from and just thinking of themselves. Worst, many are materialistic and forget the Mother Earth or its Creator.

To this day, we need men who should make our world a better place to live in. We therefore need “People who are positive thinkers; the Good Ones who Change Others, the Better Ones who Change the System, and the Best Ones who change Themselves.“

Turning Waste to Energy

Want to Clean

Developing and managing a waste disposal in a community or a city is a serious matter of concern. Toying or delaying its system can go out of control. 

Garbage on a park

In the City of Pines, the garbage disposal system wasted the City’s finance. Perchance, the local government officials had been playing their waste management system and were caught by time where to dump their garbage. Eventually, their garbage became a nuisance to the locality. It affected their clean and green programs and the tourism industry. Just recently, one of their garbage disposal areas run into trash slide. It buried some houses and covered a road. It also contaminated springs and water source of some communities. The garbage collection is inefficient and the city government had to pay millions to truck howlers in moving out their garbage to other landfills outside its territory.

CJH sewer lines flowing downstream

There are many ways to deal with garbage as garbage has also many forms. There are also laws that deal with garbage such as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act. Other local government units had adopted this law or prioritized and created their own Waste Management Ordinance.

We have a right to live in a clean, safe environment. Individuals and households also have a responsibility to protect their local environment, and to ensure that their waste does not create a health problem or nuisance for neighbors. People should be made aware that penalties can be applied to those who breach local or state laws. Waste that is not properly managed can create serious health or social problems in a community.

To this day, there are technologies that could convert garbage into useful forms. We see mottos that say “there is money in garbage”. But it is up for our community and officials to conform to an efficient and inexpensive waste management system.

wastes coming from shopping malls

One good technology is converting the trash to energy. Every community consumes high cost of electricity. So why not convert this many wastes to energy and decipher the garbage disposal problem. A technology that would convert the wastes to energy, fertilizers or to any useful forms will add income to a locality.

In the Asian region, there are countries using this technology. This technology revolves around the production of energy pellets out of household waste. The pellets are produced by shredding and dehydrating trash, specifically plastics and biodegradable waste. Much of those that cannot be used for energy would first be removed and used as landfill material.

These pellets, called refuse-derived fuel, will then be used to power up boilers which can then fuel turbines that will produce electricity. “The energy pellets burn like coal and have the same if not more of the burning properties of coal. Of course, the pellets do not have the harmful side effects that we suffer when we burn fossil fuels like coal”.  This will ease garbage piles, which needs areas for transfer stations and will make our streets and backyards cleaner.

Balili stream with plastic bags, waste coming from Pines City

This local government had been paying millions to transport its wastes to other landfills and bought machines from abroad to solve the garbage backlog but it seems this had not solved the problem. Our officials should deal with our neighboring Asian government and not with negotiators making business. 

Irisan trush slide

We have many other eco waste technologies but our countrymen needs financing and partners which our government should look into.    
  

Children looking for a living

Of course, the actual cost of the machines would have to be seriously considered. The local government may venture into business such as a private-public partnership arrangement with government or other business partnership that will benefit the public.

 

To tag on the universal mantra of the environmentalists which are Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, a fourth principle is recommended which is Convert. As in converting garbage into fuel to generate power. We should all be responsible to make our planet safe to live and make it environmental friendly. ( )

Solar land fill

One Clean Community