Kalookan Bishop Cardinal Pablo Virgilio “Ambo” David called Filipinos’ failure to implement proper waste segregation as provided in a 25-year-old law aimed at environmental protection as “one of the great ecological sins of our time.”
“We love to blame government, or corporations, or the informal waste sector. But the truth is harder: RA 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000) failed because we, as a nation, refused to change our daily habits. Because we did not have the discipline to segregate,” Cardinal David said in a statement posted in social media.
The local government units, in turn, said David opt to just haul and dump trash and “because corruption fattened itself on hauling contracts and tipping fees rather than investing in real waste reduction, composting, and Materials Recovery Facilities.”
“This is one of the great ecological sins of our time. A sin not only against creation, but against the poor who suffer first from polluted water, poisoned fish, and floods worsened by canals clogged with our own negligence. A sin against future generations whose shores will be lined not with seashells, but with our plastic shame,” the prelate said.
Ecological solid waste management
David recalled the time R.A. 9003 was passed into law.
“I remember reading it and being struck by its moral clarity. The law abolished open dumpsites. It required every LGU to dispose of solid waste legally only through sanitary landfills — but sanitary landfills are meant to receive only residual waste. That is possible only if segregation from source actually happens,” he said.
“Because that is the heart of RA 9003: Segregation, Composting, Recycling → Residual Waste (the least possible amount),” he added.
He lamented that Filipinos continue to throw all types of trash such as biodegradable, recyclable, hazardous, medical, industrial waste together in one bin, which is collected by the same truck, and disposed of in one dumpsite.
“So our landfills are filled to the brim not because our waste is too much, but because we refuse to obey the most basic rule: segregate your trash. Sanitary landfills, without segregation, become nothing more than unsanitary landfills,” he said.
Guilt, repentance, change
Cardinal Ambo underscored that “guilt is not the ending. Repentance is. And repentance means change.”
He put put a call for Filipinos to “segregate from home. Demand that LGUs comply with RA 9003. Support recycling and composting. Stop treating the ocean as a bottomless pit. And start treating our country as the fragile, beautiful, irreplaceable archipelago that God entrusted to our care.”
“We can do better. For the sake of the seas that surround us, the children who will inherit them,
and the Creator who commanded us to “till and keep” His garden — we must do better,” he added. — BAP, GMA Integrated News
