Garbage problem linked to family planning

Boyet, 10, discards sheets of stickers he has already pasted. Bobot, 7, disposes the plastic cups of ice cream he has finished. And their sister Baby? At one year old, she’s still too young to join the "throw-away" society but with disposable diapers, she is also guilty of making garbage.

Meet the Cruz kids, part of the Metro Manila population that numbers 9,932,560 as of May 1, 2000 (source: 2002 Philippine Statistics Yearbook). They now live in a megacity, a term coined by the United Nations in the ’70s for a city with 10 million or more residents.

In 1975, Metro Manila was not yet among the five megacities of the world. But 25 years later, it is now among 19 such cities, 11 of which are in the developing world. By 2015, there will be 23 megacities as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) predicts.

"In many cities, between 30 and 50 percent of the garbage goes uncollected," points out UNFPA’s Footprints and Milestones: Population and Environmental Change, the State of the World Population Report 2002. "Even the more developed cities find it difficult to keep up with the steady increase in waste that accompanies rising consumption."

The Cruz kids live in Quezon City, one of the 13 cities and four municipalities of Metro Manila. Seven of these components make up the list of 10 most populous cities of the Philippines, including Cebu, Davao and Zamboanga.

Metro Manilans face a problem of waste disposal since the two main waste disposal facilities of the premier metropolis of the country have been closed, according to Asian Development Bank (ADB) Key Indicators 2002.

ADB estimates that the population of Metro Manila as well as of the other parts of the country (approximately 80 million) will increase by 50 million between 2000 and 2050. The basis for this projection: Between 1990 and 2000, the country’s total fertility rates dropped from 4.4 births per woman to 3.4 births per woman. During that time, too, there was a decline in infant mortality rate from 45 to 30 per 1,000 live births.

People mean waste products and waste means garbage. The Philippines has enacted the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act which international donors are helping implement. In particular, ADB is helping several local government units of Metro Manila set up public education programs on recycling as well as refuse processing centers (including materials recovery facilities and buy-back centers) with private contractors.

But often, there is a distance between the dreaming and the done, during which the Cruz kids and other Metro Manilans would have contributed to the country’s overall population growth rate of 2.36 percent. Thus, it is important to link environmental questions with information and services on family planning and other items of reproductive health.

"The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD, 1994)," says the UNFPA in its 2001 Footprints and Milestones report, "agreed on an explicit series of goals, including universal access to reproductive and sexual health devices, and a full range of family planning methods by 2015."

UNFPA adds: "Implementing ICPD recommendations for development will help defeat poverty and protect the environment. By promoting slower population growth, it will buy time in which critical decisions can be made."

For more information about population, family planning and related concerns, ReachOut Foundation International has a Helpline that provides non-judgmental, accurate and confidential information and counseling. The Helpline can be reached at 525-5845, Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. You can also access information by texting HELLO REACHOUT and sending to 2333 for Globe subscribers and 211 for Smart and Talk & Text users. You may also visit the following ReachOut clinics at 2030 Adriatico St., Malate, Manila and 127 Constaine corner Oak St., Balibago, Angeles City. Or log on to www.reachout-foundation.org.