Recycling to Save the Future The Eco-Savers of City Recycling to Save the Future Eco-Savers of Marikina City

r o r i e r. f a j a r d o

For the past five years, Thursday has always been an exciting day for 12-year-old Ma. Sabina ‘Binay’ Falcotelo and her mother Seonida, 49, a sales clerk at an established shoe store in Marikina City.

his is when the duo brings all recyclables from their home — plastic bottles, used T paper, and tin cans, among many others — to Binay’s school, the Marikina Elementary School. There the recyclable waste is weighed, computed and recorded in Binay’s school- issued pink passbook, with one point equivalent to one peso.

Twice every school year, Binay finally enjoys the “fruits” of the points she earned from collecting recyclable waste. She gets to shop, equivalent to the points she earned, for school supplies, and lately, even rice, sugar, and other basic food items for her family.

“By just segregating waste in our home, I was able to help clean it and even save for my school expenses,” says Binay, who is now in Grade 6.

The Falcotelos are among the 74,000 students and their families participating in the Marikina City Government’s Eco-Savers Program, chosen as one of 10 outstanding local government programs by the Galing Pook Foundation in 2007.

First implemented in June 2004 in Marikina’s 17 public elementary schools and 10 public high schools, the program, simply called Eco-Savers, aims to promote and popularize waste segregation and recovery by tapping students and teachers. The program in effect targeted the students’ and teachers’ households, which are key to getting community support for the program, says Assistant City Administrator Gloria Buenaventura.

Breaking the culture, notions

While local and national laws promoting waste segregation and recycling to protect the environment are already in place, many communities still lack knowledge and awareness how to go about these, admits Buenaventura, who also heads the City Waste Management Office (CWMO), main implementer of Eco-Savers.

“We have a culture of arimohonan,” she points out, referring to a local term for the attitude of storing worn-out stuff which could still be reused or recycled.

With the enactment of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2001, local government units were mandated to adopt a waste segregation scheme to pave the way for the realization of an initial 20-percent waste diversion goal through reduction, reuse, and recycling of waste.

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Earlier in 1996, the city formed its own waste management office through City Ordinance No. 204. In 2002, a year after RA 9003 was passed, the city passed Ordinance No. 046, mandating the segregation of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste.

Buenaventura also says this lack of awareness and practice of waste segregation among residents proved costly to the city government.

At one peso for the collection and hauling of a kilo of waste, the city used to spend P230,000 a day for the same amount of waste it produces everyday. More than half of these however are non-biodegradable, of which 80 percent could easily be recycled.

Apart from the lack of awareness, the program, says Buenaventura, also had to counter the negative perceptions about waste segregation — that it is hard to do and that environmental programs like Eco-Savers are only temporary.

Typical of this mindset was the initial reaction of Mrs. Falcotelo to Eco-Savers: “At first, I didn’t want my daughter to participate. I thought it was just a school project, for which they were asked to bring waste material.”

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What helped the program to successfully take off was the planning and strategizing based on the realities of the communities where Eco-Savers would take place, volunteers Buenaventura.

The idea, she says, came about as an offshoot of the city government’s participation in multilateral programs on solid-waste management in Asia and Africa through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as early as 2002.

An exchange visit in Thailand the same year gave Buenaventura the idea that communities could benefit from segregating and recycling waste. “A community organized itself and traded recyclable waste for groceries. I thought we could do it here.”

It was Mayor who later suggested that the program be school-based. By tapping elementary and high school students, the program was expected to eventually capture Marikina’s households.

In December 2003, the CWMO presented the program to the Department of Education (DepEd). Series of meetings were held until the program was slated for pilot implementation at the Marikina Elementary School in June 2004.

To institutionalize the program, the mayor issued an executive order that same year which created an Oversight Committee composed of city waste management and DepEd officials.

Preparations for the implementation of the program took a year, says Buenaventura, recalling how the basic steps in executing the program would again make Marikina the pioneer in using such concept in waste management.

The first step involved the formulation of the program mechanics, which Buenaventura says, were made simpler to encourage participation of students and teachers, and their families.

Second was the passage of City Council Resolution No. 060, series of 2004, encouraging public elementary and high school students and faculty to support the program.

Third came the development of bilingual materials (in Filipino and English) to explain the Eco- Savers program to participants. These became the basis of the series of orientation sessions in the schools to familiarize students and teachers on the objectives and mechanics of the program.

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Fourth was the development and distribution of the Eco-Savers passbook. During its first year of implementation, in 2004, the program spent P248,000 for the printing of passbooks.

Fifth came the talks with the DepEd for partnership and full participation.

Buenaventura says the implementers agreed to secure a resolution from the City Council because the program involved money, which is always considered a “sensitive” issue.

“We hit some ‘rackets’ along the way,” she says, referring to the practice among few teachers of requiring students to bring recyclable waste and using the money derived from selling the waste. In some instances, students are even asked to bring the waste in exchange for better grades.

So as to also avoid the unlikely possibility that parents would get the money from their children, Mayor Fernando suggested using school supplies when students redeem the points they have earned.

The hardest part, Buenaventura admits, is the fiscal management aspect of the program — the handling of the proceeds and the redemption process, or the part where students and teachers claim the number of points they earned by ‘shopping’ at the Eco-Savers Mobile Store.

No initial warm reception

The program expectedly did not get a 100-percent warm reception from students’ families at first, brought about by the lack of awareness of the waste segregation system.

Mrs. Falcotelo was all the more aghast to find out that daughter Binay, then only in Grade 1, collected recyclables behind her back and brought them secretly to her school.

It was only when Binay started bringing home pad paper, pencils, and other school supplies redeemed from the Eco-Savers Mobile Store that Mrs. Falcotelo realized the positive impact of the program.

Soon, Mrs. Falcotelo herself started segregating and collecting recyclables even from her workplace and from neighbors. “Our roof gets full of recyclable stuff I collect wherever I go. We look forward to Thursday, when we would bring all the stuff to school and earn points.”

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For 10-year-old Wilma Wenceslao and her mother Lani, 43, picking up waste and segregating easily became second nature since they started participating in the program in 2004. Back then, Wilma was still in kindergarten at the Barangka Elementary School.

“We automatically pick up plastics and tin cans whenever we walk. We also ask our neighbors to set aside some for us,” says Mrs. Wenceslao.

Mrs. Wenceslao says she does not mind being seen as a “garbage collector” especially by those who don’t know anything about Eco-Savers. She says: “I am not ashamed because this has helped our family a lot. The saying that there is wealth in garbage is true here.”

Help for the Wenceslaos has come in different forms. One is that the program easily eliminated garbage at home. “Wala nang tambak sa amin, hindi katulad dati (There is no more clutter, unlike before),” says Mrs. Wenceslao, a mother of three.

More importantly though, Eco-Savers has helped augment the family income, which has depended primarily on the meager wages of her husband working as a dump-truck driver in western Africa. Expenses for school supplies and even groceries are cut by almost half whenever they redeem the points they have earned.

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Last December, the Wenceslaos amassed as high as 1,500 points — equivalent to P1,500 — which earned for them an incentive of P1,000.

Mrs. Wenceslao credits her brother, who works as a caretaker at the nearby Loyola Memorial Park, for her family’s accomplishment of 20 kilos in monthly collections, the highest to date, surpassing the erstwhile average of 16 kilos. Her brother helped them collect garbage for recycling from the park after All Saints’ Day last year.

Eco-Savers also annually gives an incentive of P1,000 to the teacher with the highest number of points earned; P5,000 to the top-performing school; and lately, P3,000 to the principal of the top performing school.

“We were happily surprised with the incentive,” Mrs. Wenceslao says. The family used it to buy rice, sardines, noodles, coffee, sugar, and Wilma’s food in school such as cupcakes and instant juice drinks.

Back at the Marikina Elementary School, the Falcotelos were also recipients of the incentive for two consecutive years already. In December 2007, when Binay was in Grade 5, the family earned 1,000 points since June that year alone. During the same period last year, Binay’s passbook already registered 1,300 points.

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“The incentive and the items we shop from here are really a big help in these times of crisis,” says Mrs. Falcotelo.

Glitches

To be sure, the Eco-Savers program had its share of glitches too, this CWMO’s Buenaventura and other participating teachers admit as much.

First, there had been some reluctance on the part of some parents to participate in the program because the partner junk shop of the city government had lower buying rates compared to those of non-accredited junk shops.

Buenaventura says this is understandable because the partner junk shop, Best Scrap Enterprises, also incurs expenses in collecting and hauling items from all 27 schools, as well as in recording the points earned.

Marciana de Guzman, a home economics teacher at the Marikina Elementary School, also says the partner junk shop is better than other junk shops because it collects every reusable and recoverable item. “They even accept broken plates and glasses,” she says.

Second, there were instances wherein students tamper with the points recorded in the passbooks, reportedly on the prodding of their own parents. This is why the Eco-Savers staff keep their records up-to-date as a way to countercheck, Buenaventura says.

Third, some teachers considered the Eco-Savers as an additional work for them. “This is why we free them from all the clerical work. We do all the work,” says Buenaventura. Teachers and principals just participate in the program and are issued their own passbooks too.

The program is anchored on a very lean staff, composed of a program coordinator, five monitors and collectors of passbooks, and 10 MCF (initials of Mayor Marides Carlos- Fernando) volunteers who help in the recording and monitoring. Every month, the staff computes and tallies the points from the passbook for their peso value.

The partner junk shop, Best Scrap Enterprises, was chosen through public bidding in 2006 to collect and haul the dry waste from students and teachers. For this program alone, the company employs 20 staff and uses three hauling vans to smoothly service all 27 participating schools.

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Evident and intangible gains

It did not take long for the students, teachers, and their families to enjoy the economic, social, environmental, and cultural gains from the program.

Families of students like the Falcotelos and Wenceslaos, for instance, were able to save every year up to as much as P1,800, which they used to defray expenses on school supplies and lately, on basic food items in their homes.

Last December, an innovation was made in the redemption of the points. Eco-Savers prepared Christmas food packages which families could use to prepare their Noche Buena meal (traditional family dinner on Christmas Eve). Mrs. Wenceslao says she was able to shop for ingredients for spaghetti and fruit salad from the Eco-Savers Mobile Store.

The program helped the city government save on costs for the disposal of local solid waste, says Buenaventura. The required 50 truckloads or trips a day to the dump site has been reduced to just an average of 30 trips a day. This has resulted in a significant cut in the total daily expenses for waste disposal incurred by the city, down by almost half from P245,000 (or P4,900 per garbage truck/trip) to only P147,000.

The program is also said to have netted since 2004 a total of 986,000 kilos of recyclable waste and 906,738 pieces of bottle — having a total money value of P3,953,440 — which could have just ended up in the dump site had these not been recovered.

The total weight is equivalent to 197 trips of a 10-wheeler truck to the dump site that the city has saved, Buenaventura says.

Moreover, Eco-Savers has provided Best Scrap Enterprises and its staff with a steady source of income.

The junk shop’s general manager, Florencia Prado, admits the demand for recyclable waste in the market has gone down in the last months due to the global economic crunch that has not spared countries like the .

“Many junk shops in Marikina have already closed due to the weak demand. Many of our clients stopped buying because of the slowdown in their operations,” says Prado.

Despite this, Prado says her company is committed to the program because “it has helped

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raise people’s consciousness on waste segregation.”

In the area of environmental protection, Eco-Savers has also helped educate and mobilize the community to practice ecological solid waste management, says Buenaventura.

Knowing next to nothing about waste segregation before her daughter started participating in the program, Mrs. Falcotelo now says, “When I learned about it, it already became a way of life for us. At home and wherever we go, we segregate.”

Lourdes Larios, principal at the Barangka Elementary School, says she practices waste segregation at home and in school “because I want to be an example to students. We should lead by example.”

The diverted waste from dump sites and the decreased number of trips by the garbage trucks have reduced air and land pollution, decongested traffic, and helped conserve energy.

“The benefits are intangible,” says Buenaventura. More than the economic and environmental gains, the program has helped inculcate the positive values of saving and

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discipline based on proper waste management.

Buenaventura says the program gradually instills in the children not only the ways to save but also the benefits of managing waste properly, even as it promotes active participation of parents and stirs the consciousness and curiosity of the community.

Such that in Marikina now, shares Buenaventura, “waste is now automatically recycled during parties, wakes, meetings.”

Mrs. Wenceslao agrees. She says her neighbors learned about waste segregation and the Eco-Savers program from her persistent requests for them to set aside their tin cans, bottles, and other recyclables for her and daughter Wilma. “Soon enough, they were already the ones going to our home to bring the waste they’ve collected,” she says.

Environmentally conscious Marikeños

Evidently, what has been key to the success of the program is the relatively high level of consciousness on environmental protection among Marikeños.

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Even before it adopted Eco-Savers, the city government has been known to emphasize environmental cleanliness in its governance.

During the term of former mayor Bayani Fernando, public schools also participated in an environmental campaign called “Munting Basura, Ibulsa Muna (Small Trash, Put It First In Your Pocket)” which enticed students and teachers to help promote clean surroundings by keeping their little trash first until they find a trash can to properly dispose of it.

Bayani is the current chairperson of the Metro Development Authority (MMDA) and husband of the incumbent mayor.

Recalls de Guzman, the home economics teacher from Marikina Elementary School, of the campaign: “The government delivered sacks and sacks of candy as rewards for students who followed (it).”

She says that with this prior consciousness on environmental cleanliness, it wasn’t long before the typical Marikeño also began adopting waste segregation and recycling.

It is also worth noting that Marikina City is the first city in the National Capital Region to fully implement a waste segregation program at the city-wide level. For such efforts at sustaining health environment for its people, Marikina was also a recipient of the “healthy city” award from the World Health Organization late last year.

Passbook as educational tool

The Eco-Savers passbook itself is an educational tool in forming positive values for the environment and society.

Colored pink (the signature color of Marikina) and having the same size of the typical bank-issued passbook, the Eco-Savers passbook contains information on the kinds of recyclables — paper, aluminum cans, mineral-water bottles, plastic, copper, steel, glass, and carton.

It also enumerates the traits of the ‘New Filipino,’ to name a few: (1) does not litter; (2) picks up the trash he or she sees; (3) segregates biodegradable from non-biodegradable waste; (4) praises or appreciates anyone who has done good; (5) follows traffic rules; and (6) crosses the street using pedestrian and other proper lanes only.

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The passbook is also replete with slogans which people could easily remember. Written at the back is this: “Let’s Not Waste the Waste! Reuse, Reduce, Repair, Recycle.” Another reminder is seen at the front flap: Ang“ Basurang Inalagaan Ay Pakikinabangan (Waste that is Properly Disposed of Could Still be Used).”

Challenges ahead

Both organizers and beneficiaries are certain that the Eco-Savers Program would just continue. Nonetheless, they are aware of the challenges ahead as it enters its fifth year in June 2009.

Foremost of these challenges is achieving a 100-percent student and teacher participation, says CWMO’s Buenaventura. “We know we could not please everybody, but it would be good that more would participate,” she says.

To date, the program is incorporated with the scouting program, which is a good training ground for waste management. Points earned here could be used as payment for the membership fee of those interested in joining the Boy and Girl Scouts movement.

Currently, the Eco-Savers management is also negotiating with private schools in Marikina

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for them to adopt the program by this coming school year.

Yet another challenge is replicating the program in other local government units. The city government has reportedly received a total of 5,612 study tours between July 2004 to June 2005 to learn from Marikina’s solid-waste management practices.

Buenaventura says local governments of Daet in Camarines Sur, Looc in Romblon, and Pasig have also visited the city to see how they could replicate the Eco-Savers Program in their communities.

Buenaventura acknowledges that the program likewise faces the usual risks inherent in any other government undertaking, among which is falling prey to politicking. “Even though it is backed up by a city ordinance and executive order, there is no guarantee,” she says. “The fate of any government project is uncertain if there is no support from the administration.”

Still, Buenaventura, the main author of Eco-Savers, is hopeful that the next leadership would continue the program. Mayor Fernando’s third and last term ends in 2010. Philippine law prohibits her to seek reelection after three consecutive terms.

Carrying on

For the parents, students and teachers already participating in the program, there is no other way for Eco-Savers but to go on because of its educational, environmental, and financial benefits.

“We know that our continuous participation would benefit us, too,” says home economics teacher de Guzman.

Principal Larios of the Barangka Elementary School is similarly confident the city would continue Eco-Savers as it has brought honor and recognition to Marikina. “The people were part of the crafting of the program, that’s why they feel it is theirs,” she says.

In the years to come, parents and teachers alike would like to see the following modifications in the program:

1. an increase in the amount of incentives to encourage more to participate and to emphasize the importance of achieving high points;

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2. expanding the grocery line at the Eco-Savers Mobile Store to include other non-food needs like bath soap, toothpaste, detergent bar, and shampoo;

3. inclusion of worn-out appliances in the allowable list of recyclables as these mostly comprise the junk at home; and

4. consideration of medical and dental services and/or medicines for simple colds and cough, and vitamins in the redemption of points.

Incoming Grade 6 student Binay says she would continue participating in the program when she enters high school next year. Vowing to continue practicing segregation when she has her own family in the future, she says, “It simply teaches us two important things — protecting our surroundings and saving for our future needs.”

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