Lapu-Lapu uses trash for garden and hollow blocks

Every week, 43-year-old Boyet Ellena and his co-workers harvest vegetables and fruits from a garden in barangay Bangkal, Lapu-Lapu city, part of a 2.5 hectare materials recovery facility (MRF).

Ellena, a resident of barangay Mactan, used to work in the city’s dumpsite before he became a gardener in a nursery that measures 5,000 square meters and grows eggplants, squash, chili, tomatoes, papaya, watermelon, ginger, Chinese kangkong and okra.

Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Paz Radaza said the fresh produce would be given for free to different barangays to motivate them to clean their surroundings “para makita nila ba ang mga produkto sa mga organic fertilizer ug ila matilawan (so they can see and taste the product of using organic

fertilizer).”

Biodegradable trash is mixed and turned into compost that looks like blackish soil.

Lapu-Lapu city is one of the few local governments in Cebu with a fully functioning MRF.

Ninety workers operate  three large mechanical conveyor belt units.

Jennifer Alaan, assistant MRF head, said they sort out garbage to set aside biodegradable waste – food scraps, paper, tree branches, plants, etc. to be decomposed into compost.

Non-biodegradable waste like plastic are shredded to be added in the mixture to make hollow blocks or concrete footpaths or plant boxes.

Recyclables like plastic bottles and tin cans will be sold.

Garbage trucks are weighed before and after they arrive at the MRF to determine the load they bring to the facility.

Alaan said the facility receives an average 60 tons of garbage a day.

Barangays bring their trash there from 5 p.m. to dawn.

Trash collected by the city government is dumped there at daytime.

Alaan said that the MRF had been operating 24 hours daily since it opened last Feb. 1, 2009.

The MRF has 273 employees which includes city garbage collectors, city task force members and truck drivers.

In the MRF’s garden, Ellena said they use a mixture of compost and a commercial fertilizer in the soil to produce healthier plants.

The vegetables and fruits, he said, were of better quality than those sold commercially but said the compost is for government use only – in Lapu-Lapu’s beautification and building projects.

For a barangay to get compost, local officials only need a permit from the mayor’s office.

She said the hollow block making machine at the MRF could produce 50 hollow blocks .

The ingredients are a bag of cement mixed with sand and shredded plastic.

Residual waste – left-over materials that can’t be recycled or composted – are brought to the closed dumpsite in barangay Mactan for transport to a private facility in Naga City that would process them, said Marvin Francisco, Lapu-Lapu City MRF head.

Francisco said the FDRCON Resource Recovery Management Division in Naga would pick up the remaining residual waste in the dumpsite.

Four trucks a day are sent to remove all residual waste.

Alaan said the Lapu-Lapu City government strictly implements its no-segregation-no-collection policy and that Oponganons know this.

“It’s their problem if they get caught because it’s the law of the city and the city has a letter from the DENR to implement it,” said Alaan.

MRF personnel also help by organizing clean-up drives in barangays.

Maria Mariza Maglangit, Abuno Elementary School principal, said the school placed  bins for segregated trash in their 24 classrooms.

She said teaching students to clean their surroundings and segregate trash was part of the school subject of Good Morals and Right Conduct.

Last March, the school received a citation ticket because it lacked a garbage holding area, an offense that carries a P3,000 fine.

Fortunately the school was allowed to skip the fine and was given a chance to comply with the city ordinance requirement.

Today it has a garbage holding area in a 10 square meter space fenced with galvanized iron sheets.