‘Smokey Mt. to stink no more’

The infamous Smokey Mountain in Tondo, Manila will soon be smokey no more.

The dumping area will eventually be the envy of nearby municipalities once an approved project proposal of the Department of Science and Technology is placed at the Smokey Mountain reclamation area.

Right at the Smokey Mountain reclamation area, the ITDI-developed commercial prototype bioreactor that can biodegrade municipal solid wastes will be soon be operational.

The project is spearheaded by ITDI’s Microbiology and Genetics Division (MGD) led by Engr. Romeo Cabacang. The project team is now working to enhance the facility’s social acceptability in the area.

Once operational, the Smokey Mountain facility shall become the technology showcase of DOST to various local government units and the private sector in its effort to provide a viable alternative component solution to the ever worsening solid waste disposal problem of the country, particularly in the Metro Manila area.

The project also comes very timely as the San Mateo Landfill site will soon be shutdown come December 2000.

The ITDI composting technology, which uses a bioreactor, is applicable only to biodegradable solid wastes. Hence, it is necessary that recipient communities have an existing waste segregation program.

This is evident in the Smokey Mountain Reclamation Housing which provides temporary relocation site to squatter families affected by the shutdown and subsequent development of Smokey Mountain.

The Sambayanan ng Muling Pagkabuhay Multi-Purpose Cooperative (SMPMPC) in the area is also promoting waste reduction, re-use and recycling as their counterpart in this DOST endeavor.

Members of the cooperative include the Ecological Alternative Guild (EAG), an environmental group of young people from Smokey Mountain many of whom were former child scavengers.

The ITDI-DOST is promoting the application of the composting technology especially in the municipalities.

The technology hopes to greatly reduce the municipal solid wastes (56 percent of which is biodegradable and 28 percent recyclable) being dumped into landfill sites.

It also offers a lot of advantages among which are: no lecheate discharge, comparatively insignificant odor emission, accelerated composting process, no worm proliferation, less attractive to flies, minimal power consumption, and competitive compost production cost.

Moreover, the compost end-product can be sold to farmers (applicable to vegetables, flower gardens and seed crops). Selling of compost is also very timely since there is now a growing trend in the consumption of organically-grown vegetables and other crops.