Mandaue official eyes schools to teach Takakura composting

A Mandaue City official plans to ask public and private schools to teach students home composting using the Takakura method.

These schools could teach the method to students by making it their science project, said Ricardo Mendoza, Solid Waste Management director of Mandaue City.

Mendoza said the students could then disseminate and employ what they learned at school in their homes.

He said  he had been practicing household composting using the method after a doctor from Japan last year showed him how to to it.

He said the system was only mixing food waste or kitchen waste with a mother compost or a compost seed to produce good bacteria or microorganisms, which would decompose these biodegradable waste, and turn it into compost soil.

The Takakura method was named after a Japanese who created this system – Koji Takakura, who’s the coordinator of the Wakamatsu Environment Research Institute.

Amid this call, barangay officials in Canduman have successfully pioneered the vermi-composting method in Mandaue City where night crawlers or African worms instead of microorganisms are used to hasten the decomposition of biodegradable waste.

In 2008, the barangay became a pilot-barangay for the bio-man system in the city where garbage collectors in trisikads called “Bio-Men” visit houses in the barangay to collect their biodegradable waste and deliver them to a common compost pit in the barangay.

The compost pit is part of the barangay’s materials recovery facility where the biodegradable waste is processed to become compost soil, which are sold to farmers and gardening enthusiasts.

Last Aug. 30, the barangay won the Sulong Mandaue, a search for model barangays in waste management and eco-preneurship, and was awarded a P500,000 cash prize.

Barangay Canduman captain Leo Jabas said he was not sold out to the idea of home composting because residents might not do it properly.

“Magpataka nalang unya na sila ug sagol sa mga sagbot kay naa ra man na sa ilang nataran (They might not properly do it and they would just mix whatever garbage they have in their backyard),” said Jabas, who is pushing for waste segregation and for the barangays in the city to set up their own facilities to turn biodegradable waste to compost.

He also cited the barangay residents cooperation in strictly practicing waste segregation.

He however said it wasn’t easy convincing them to segregate their waste when he started the information drive on the practice.

A film about the effects of global warming changed all that.

He made sure that most residents could watch the film by dividing the barangay into 16 clusters for the film showing. /Correspondent Jucell Marie P. Cuyos