Town explores the many ways of recycling

CURTAINS are made from discarded candy wrappers as part of recycling plan of Mauban town in Quezon. DELFIN T. MALLARI JR.

MAUBAN, Quezon—Mauban, a first-class municipality in Quezon, is finding cash in trash in what seems to be a thousand and one ways.

From discarded candy wrappers, juice packs, soft-drink plastic straws and other items, curtains, comforter, throw pillows, bags, hollow blocks and assorted things are coming out at the end of the production line.

“If the garbage item is recyclable, we will find ways to convert it into something useful,” said Erly Reasonda, head of the municipal environment and natural resources office.

She showed empty juice packs filled up with plastic trash sewn together to become a “comforter,” a soft, sturdy item that may serve as protective mat for baby baths and bedridden adults.

“We sell one filled juice pack at P150. The customer can order any size of the comforter and the sewer will sew the pieces together to meet the specified order,” Reasonda said.

Recycled products

A multicolored curtain made from candy wrappers hangs at the back of her office. It sells at P350.

In one corner, Reasonda pointed to samples of concrete hollow blocks made from pulverized trash, cement and fly-ash coming from a coal-fired power plant on the outskirts of Mauban.

Commercial production of the hollow blocks has yet to start, however. The municipality may have to acquire a covered truck to collect the fly-ash from the plant.

In another part of Reasonda’s office are hats made from woven strips of sando plastic bags, hand bags made from juice packs, flower pot holders and trays from soft-drink straws, and chairs from motorcycle tires.

An agriculture technology graduate, Reasonda said all the raw materials they used in producing the usable items were part of the daily trash being collected by the garbage trucks going around town.

She said her office had tied up with the local social welfare and development office for the lectures and skills training they gave to the womenfolk on how to turn trash into cash.

Trash collection

Reasonda said six trucks were roaming daily to collect trash and bring the piles to the main materials recovery facility (MRF) near the 2.2-hectare sanitary landfill in Barangay Lual Baryo, four kilometers away from the town proper. The MRF has shredders, pulverizer and other equipment to enable workers to produce raw materials for recycling.

Most of the nonbiodegradable wastes, such as plastics, metals and glass are sorted out in the barangays, Reasonda said. The residents bring their collection to the MRF only for shredding, she added.

The biodegradable ones are dumped at the sanitary landfill and covered with clay soil quarried from a nearby hill.

Mauban’s old dump has been transformed into a nursery for fruit-bearing and forest trees for its reforestation program.

Model town

Essie Verzo, senior environmental management specialist and provincial head of the Environmental Management Bureau, said Mauban was one of the model towns in the province in solid waste management.

Reasonda said the local government acquired the sanitary landfill for a meager P2.5 million, but still managed to build a concrete fence and the MRF. “We did not immediately occupy the whole landfill area and instead operated it parcel by parcel,” she said.

Construction of a hazardous waste tank at the landfill is also being prepared.

With a proposed ordinance banning the use of plastic and other nonbiodegradable items as packing materials, Reasonda predicted Mauban’s success in its quest for a clean environment.