23 metro cemeteries yield 98 truckloads of garbage

First the bad news: The millions of people who visited their departed loved ones in different Metro Manila cemeteries left enough trash to fill up 98 dump trucks, according to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).

Francis Martinez, head of the MMDA’s Metro Parkway Clearing Group, said on Sunday that since Oct. 28, the agency has collected 588 tons of trash from 23 cemeteries in the metropolis.

The good news, however, is that the figure is still lower compared to last year’s haul of 638 tons on Nov. 1 and 2, he added.

“The [amount of] garbage we collect during Undas goes down every year. But we can still see [that there are] people who have no consideration for their surroundings and still dump their trash anywhere as you can see [by] the truckloads of garbage [we have so far gathered up],” he said in a phone interview.

Most of the trash collected by the MMDA teams consisted of plastic and Styrofoam containers. Information materials that had been distributed by advertising groups to people in the cemeteries also added to the waste pile.

Martinez, meanwhile, attributed the decline in trash collected in cemeteries to the segregation efforts of several organizations like the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation.

“They really helped cut down the [amount of] garbage since some were recycled and reused,” he said.

As early as Oct. 28, MMDA personnel were deployed to various cemeteries to assist local government units in garbage collection.