Marikina cleanup: Our river, but not our trash

The assorted collection included old tires and mattresses, foam sheets, plastic and styrofor packaging, etc.—household discards that are “regularly collected three times a week” in Marikina, a city that boasts of multiple awards for its waste-collection system.

The fact that such items still ended up in the Marikina River could only mean one thing for Gloria Buenaventura, head of the city’s environment management unit, who on Saturday spoke frankly about the results of the ongoing cleanup and dredging operations on the waterway.

“Of course, it’s not our residents who throw garbage into the river,” Buenaventura insisted in an interview, as she called on the Department of the Interior and Local Government to impose sanctions on “nonperforming” cities that are apparently making her team’s job harder each year.

Littering culprits

“We have a schedule here. You can even ask the residents how we regularly collect the trash,” she stressed.

Buenaventura named some littering culprits: nearby Antipolo, Montalban and Cainta in Rizal province, where the river also runs through.

“We scout those areas also,” she said, noting that residents there had admitted in interviews that garbage collection in their communities were “not that consistent.”

Last year, Buenaventura said, she even visited Barangay Cupang in Antipolo and gave local authorities a map of the areas that were not being reached by their city’s garbage trucks. The local officials then promised to fix the problem.

‘Nothing happened’

“But look, nothing happened! What can we do (in Marikina)? We can only coordinate with them,” she said.

Reached for comment, Tony Mateo, Rizal provincial public information chief, dismissed Buenaventura’s complaints as “mere hearsay” that could not be easily verified.

The Marikina city government should “formalize” its garbage-related complaints against its neighboring towns and cities rather than just air them through the media, Mateo said.

“Don’t just go to the barangays,” he said. “How would we know if they had really spoken to a barangay official?”