This refers to an editorial piece of a broadsheet titled “Running out of landfills” published in its July 16, 2023 issue.
The editorial stated it is expensive for local government units to transport their waste to landfills. For Baguio City and other local governments in the Cordillera, it is more so because garbage has to be transported to other municipalities in other province and pay hefty fees.
Philippines is the only country in the world where incinerators are banned since 1999. We have been conned to adopt this to save the atmosphere while other countries were incinerating their waste.
For 24 years, we have been using up our land to accommodate our wastes.
“Not in my own backyard” reflects the willingness of residents to offer their location to accept disposal of waste. Soon, we are going to run out of landfills.
It is time for us to revisit this matter of incinerators and the imagined pollution genera-ted by them. I implore authorities to do so.
Incinerators today have high efficiency ra-ting such as those being used in Singapore. Not only are the emissions safe, they also generate electricity and just as important, there is little residual that is also good fertilizer. — PETER CHONG, Baguio City
May 16, 2024