’Twas a season for recycling in Quezon City

Filipino ingenuity knows no bounds and you can count on the Filipino to innovate. This trait shines particularly during the holidays.

Name it – the holiday spirit brings out something new which is crafted by Filipino hands. The possibilities are endless: it started with Christmas Trees made out of twigs, progressing to the more complicated angels and reindeers meticulously executed and assembled manually. The artist in the Filipino finds expression especially during this holiday season.

Noticeably this year, the trend is towards recycling. With Metro Manila garbage mounting, what can be a better alternative than to recycle items, which would otherwise find their way to the dumpsite. Every Filipino is aware of this, even unconsciously, because of the presence of piles of uncollected garbage in his neighborhood.

The garbage problem prompted the Quezon City Barangay Operations Center, headed by Albert Seno, to launch an Inter-Barangay Lantern Contest in its four districts, specifying the use of recyclable materials. It does not involve just a single lantern, but a number of lanterns decorating and lighting up the entire barangay. The response was encouraging, with enticing prizes at stake. First prize is P50,000, second prize P30,000 and third prize P20,000.

Barangay Doña Aurora of District IV, bounded by N. Ponce and Luskot Streets, near the better-known Banawe area near E. Rodriguez Avenue had an existing concept based on the lanterns their street cleaners were making as a means of livelihood.

Barangay Captain La Rainne Abad Sarmiento, young, energetic and charming housewife and mother, decided to make creative use of empty PET (polyethlene terephthalate) bottles, mostly 1.5 liters of Coke, Sprite and Royal Tru-Orange.

A brisk collection of entries in all the households in the barangay ensued. They had more than enough PET bottles on hand; people were only too willing to cooperate and glad to find a functional use for what was otherwise clutter.

The lanterns are predominantly round, with 10 empty PET bottles iterated to produce one lantern. Discarded circular frames of electric fans were used as the foundation to make the bottle-lanterns sturdy. (The residents readily donated their old electric fans). The fluttering tails of the lanterns were fashioned out of bottle caps. Some lanterns are a combination of Coke, Sprite and Royal Tru-Orange bottles and some are wholly of one kind.

Ten workers handled the making of the lanterns for Barangay Aurora. It took two persons to produce one lantern, a sort of a partnership where one put the cut-up PET parts in place and the other supported the frame holding the parts. Each tandem was able to complete four lanterns working through the night. All in all, Barangay Doña Aurora used 700-800 empty PET bottles.

Before the lanterns were installed at the entry arches of the barangay, they first joined the procession of Our Lady of Fatima Church in Cordillera, Quezon City, around the parish.

Barangay Doña Aurora, named after the late Doña Aurora Aragon-Quezon, takes pride in the strong bayanihan spirit of its constituents. Residents enthusiastically contributed their time and effort and actively participated in the Inter-Barangay Lantern Contest.

Barangay Captain La Rainne Abad Sarmiento said she is inviting the public to visit their barangay, especially at night when the lanterns are lit.

"You can see for yourselves how we have given life to empty PET beverage bottles to herald the merry season in an environmentally responsible way," the young barangay chairperson smilingly says. – Yett Aguado