Clean up Cebu while giving jobs to the poor!

Controversial environmental organization Greenpeace, taped on board the biggest vessel in the Greenpeace fleet, the M/Y Esperanza. Today Greenpeace has become a worldwide organization campaigning to stop pollution and reverse environmental degradation caused by man. While many people disagree with their uncanny methods, often it is the only way to get their message across.

A good example was a video presentation that Greenpeace gave us on board the M/Y Esperanza where they were chasing a Japanese whaling ship off the South African coast. Two ships from Greenpeace, including the Esperanza tried to stop the Japanese whaling ship from taking the whales they just killed. In doing so, the Japanese fought the smaller Greenpeace rubber boats with water cannons, much like they do in demonstrations in Mendiola, except that this was happening in the high-seas. If Greenpeace didn't document this, no one would have known that Japan continues to defy the ban on whaling.

Closer to home, the Esperanza arrived just when the M/T Solar I sunk off the coast of Guimaras, hence Greenpeace was one of the first to arrive on the scene where an ecological disaster was just unfolding. They were able to help the hapless Philippine Coast Guard handle an oil slick of this magnitude. A week later, they went to Manila Bay and found to their horror the magnitude of the plastic refuse that pollute Manila Bay. I'm sure that this is something many Filipinos already know but it has to take an organization like Greenpeace to tell them this has to stop!

With us on this show about Greenpeace are its volunteers from many nations: Dr. Janet Cotter, a scientist from the United Kingdom, Matthew Kirkwood, a deck hand from Australia and Danny Ocampo from Marikina, a campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia. Watch this very interesting show about saving the environment on SkyCable's channel 15 at 8:00PM.

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While watching the Greenpeace videos on board the M/Y Esperanza, especially the one that showed how badly polluted Manila Bay is today, thanks to the river of refuse called the Pasig River, it got me thinking that we too should be doing something about the pollution in the Mactan Channel. While we can consider ourselves lucky that the other side of Mactan facing Olango Island plays host to Cebu's burgeoning tourist trade, the side facing the main island of Cebu is our commercial hub, the Port of Cebu. I'm sure, it is just as badly polluted like Manila Bay.

Some ten years ago, when that self-proclaimed environmental group called the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) was publicly complaining about the ship breaking operations of K& A in Balamban, and getting all that free publicity, I asked them a question: Why focus on Balamban when the pollution in Cebu harbor was a thousand times worse? No answer! Doesn't it make you wonder why they didn't care at all?

Well, I found out later that many Non-Government Organizations (NGO) exist because by getting free publicity from our newspapers, they get foreign funding. In the case of ELAC, I found out that their funding source came from the allied organizations of the labor union of Tsuneishi in Japan. Since it was no longer financially conducive to expand their operations in Japan, thanks to their labor union, Tsuneishi started its operations in Balamban, Cebu and their union tried to stop this expansion using an NGO like ELAC to depict that they were polluting our coastline.

The lessons I learned from that experience is that, many NGOs may claim or appear to be saving the environment, but the truth is, they don't really care about pollution elsewhere even if it's in their neighborhood for as long as they get money out of their advocacy. But not Greenpeace. They don't accept donations from governments or corporations, only individual supporters; after all, governments are the targets of their advocacy.

On board the Esperanza, I got into a deep discussion with Augusto "Sonny" Carpio III, Managing Trustee of the Aboitiz Group Foundation, Inc. (AGFI) that we must do something about the pollution in the Port of Cebu. We both agree that we don't even need the support of Greenpeace to clean ourselves up! Since plastics are non-biogradable, we thought of starting a campaign for stores and supermarkets to stop using plastic bags. This should be a good start.

When I was a boy, I'd go to Carbon market with my mother and we only brought a basket or a "buyot" as plastic bags did not exist. So there's no reason why we can't go back to using baskets or buyots when we do our marketing chores. We can give depressed barangays a livelihood program making buyots or baskets for people to use in lieu of plastic bags. Call this the first day of our advocacy. Let's see if Cebuanos are willing to support this move to clean Cebu and give jobs to the poor!