AYAD Melissa Bull gets a lesson in litter in the Philippines and helps build a legacy fo local communities with the idea that everywhere is someone's back yard. Turning trash into a healthy vision for communities is all part of the job description for Melissa and her counterparts in San Juan. How did they do it?

Read on as Melissa gives us the low down on some dirty business:

Driving along a bouncy road, at a speed I was sure couldn’t be legal; I closed my eyes briefly so I couldn’t see the pedicab’s and jeepneys that we were weaving through, barely centimeters from collision.  Arriving in Tacloban City that morning, I had met the representatives from host organization, the Municipality of San Juan, and we were on our way to my new hometown…some 3-4hours drive away.

Before we left the city, a quick stop was made at Jollibee.  Jollibee is more popular than McDonalds in the Philippines. But from the red and yellow theme, to the fries and burgers, it’s not hard to see where the inspiration for Jollibee came from.

My new home is called San Juan, and it is in the province of Southern Leyte, on the other side of the Leyte Mountain range from Tacloban City in the Philippines.  As we travelled up the winding road into the pristine mountains, everyone’s stomachs satisfied, I had my first encounter with waste management in the Philippines.

I had noticed everyone in the car placing their take-away food rubbish into a plastic bag. I had assumed they would dispose of the bag when we arrived at our destination, so I was completely shocked when the bag went flying out the window and landed in a grassy patch on the road verge.

I had no idea what to do. I was with my Host Organisation, the very same organisation that had requested my assistance to improve their town’s waste management. The irony was not lost on me and I was speechless. What clearer sign could there be of the huge task I had ahead of me?
 
I realized that for me to have any impact in my assignment as a Waste Management Officer, I needed to understand what level of understanding the community has about solid waste management.  Is it important to them? Does the community know where their waste goes? Do people understand the impacts of poor waste management on the environment and the health of their community?

From those first few hours on assignment, I had asked myself so many questions that I knew needed to be answered before we could begin to move forward.  Of course, getting answers to these questions wasn’t as straightforward as I hoped. I knew we needed to conduct a survey across the entire town to be able to get a comprehensive idea of solid waste management awareness levels from all socioeconomic groups within the community.  Convincing the town’s council members was a slight challenge.  I am sure they expected me to begin working on the solid waste infrastructure and programs immediately, but I knew the time spent on this survey would be far more effective as a starting point for developing a sustainable solid waste management solution in the town.

Once we gained approval, my counterpart, Ernesto Amista, organised our community volunteer interviewers to walk around their barangay, or village, asking the survey questions and filling out the Cebuano dialect version of the questionnaire. Ernesto guided our volunteers through a training session beforehand so each interviewer had the same level of knowledge about solid waste management and could understand what kind of answers were required and how they needed to be recorded on the questionnaire.

Mel's counterpart Ernesto, checking waste management awareness surveys.

Over one week, all 18 barangays in the town were surveyed and, to my surprise, the results of the survey showed that the level of awareness about solid waste management was much higher than I had expected.  Thinking back to my first day and the plastic bag of rubbish flying out the window, I realized that my initial assumption was wrong.  I thought the littering was because of a lack of education on the proper disposal of waste, but in fact it was probably more a result of a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude.  

Throughout my entire stay I would see the NIMBY attitude in action, most commonly when I travelled on the local buses and frequently watched plastic bottles and lolly wrappers go flying out the window. As long as it wasn’t in their village it was OK to litter. It seemed strange to me. Filipino people, in general, are exceptionally house-proud and every morning I would be woken at 5am by the sound of native brushes scraping across the concrete to sweep up the leaves and rubbish of the previous day.  But where the waste goes after it’s collected was another story. As long as the waste wasn’t in ‘my backyard’ then it could be disposed of in the ocean, river, rainforest or wherever.

A list of priority actions was presented to the town councillors and soon we were beginning our first improvements to solid waste management in San Juan. Firstly, education and awareness campaigns about segregation of waste – what is biodegradable and what is non-biodegradable waste? Then the implementation of segregated waste collection in the town’s urban area began. Biodegradable waste was collected and taken to the newly established Municipal Composting Facility where it was processed and matured into compost. To complement the existing waste collection, we started a pilot program in one of the rural barangays providing several waste collection stations along the main road, allowing residents to place their segregated waste into large bins for collection by the municipality waste collectors instead of separating it at home.

On the last day of my assignment, I reflected on what I had achieved in cooperation with my host organisation and I wondered if it would be sustainable. There were so many more initiatives that we could implement in the town but that wasn’t the question nagging in my mind. Would the composting facility continue operating after I left? Would the pilot program in the barangays be extended to all areas after we agreed it had been a success? Would people continue to segregate their waste or would they return to their old habits and make the segregated collection unnecessary?

I am still in contact with my counterpart on a regular basis, and also with my Filipino host family who I lived with throughout the duration of my stay. From the emails and phone calls we have shared since I left, I have heard some really encouraging things about Solid Waste Management in San Juan. Change at a community level is a slow process but I am hopeful that we have made the first, occasionally unsteady steps towards a cleaner, safer town. I also recently found out that the councillors of the Municipality of San Juan had passed a resolution to adopt me as the “special daughter” of San Juan!

In early 2010 I am planning to return to San Juan to visit my friends and family, and to find out if the solid waste management initiatives I assisted the Municipality to develop have really become examples of sustainable development. I have a feeling I may be pleasantly surprised when I find out the answer.