In Central Visayas 20K gather for coastal cleanup

CEBU, Philippines - More than 20,000 volunteers all over Central Visayas headed to beaches, coasts, waterways and underwater dive sites yesterday to collect marine trash and debris as the Philippines joined the rest of the world in celebrating the International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) Day.

An estimated 100 tons of trash were collected in a day in the simultaneous cleanup in region 7.

Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7 Regional Executive Director Isabelo Montejo said the ICC was designed “to let the public be aware on how much of the trash we throw away ends up in water bodies thereby contaminating them.” 

The coastal clean-up activities were held in different shorelines and riverbanks across Central Visayas, particularly in over 20 cities and municipalities involving 105 barangays with three major river systems and four creeks.

Volunteer scuba divers likewise conducted underwater clean-up drives in various diving sites region wide. 

“The ICC, while being the world’s largest concerted volunteer effort for the environment, is not only about collecting trash,” Montejo explained. 

“It is actually a systematized effort that assists us in determining which policies to implement or strengthen to lessen the amount of trash, especially non-biodegradable ones, that reaches our waters from human-based activities whether on land or elsewhere,” he added.

According to DENR-7 spokesperson Eddie Llamedo, the cleanup brought together logistical and human resource support provided by partners from 20 Local Government Units (LGUs), 25 National Government Agencies (NGAs) including 11 police stations, 21 from the academe sector, and 17 donors from the private sectors with seven beach resort operators.

He stressed that the Philippines has been consistently one of the top participating countries in the ICC in terms of the number of volunteers, ranking second to the United States.

In 2012, the Washington-based Ocean Conservancy listed 143,948 volunteers for the Philippines. These volunteers gathered more than 1.3 million kilograms of debris from shorelines, inland waterways and underwater sites, he said.  

Of the debris collected, the top 10 types of items were food wrappers or containers, straws and stirrers, cigarettes or cigarette filters, plastic bags, tarpaulins or plastic sheets, dining utensils such as cups and plates, and diapers, caps and lids, glass beverage bottles and clothes, shoes and slippers.

The ICC Day was first held in Texas, United States in 1986. In the Philippines, Presidential Proclamation (PP) No. 244 was issued in 1993 declaring September of every year as the National Cleanup Month. This was followed by PP 470 issued in 2003, designating every third Saturday of September as ICC Day.  (FREEMAN)