EDITORIAL - Garbage

The thing about trash during the Sinulog is not about how many tons are produced but how quickly these are collected and disposed of. While the numbers serve to amaze (wow, can we really produce so much filth in a day?), it is always how ready both community and environment can move on the morning after.

So it does not really matter if less garbage was produced this year (174 tons) as compared to last year (187 tons). The garbage produced in a festival like the Sinulog will always be in tons, and a few tons more or less hardly makes a difference.

What is important is that the morning after, following a whole day's worth of revelry, the city, and the life it wakes up to, must go on and garbage, whether collected quickly or not, cannot stand in its way to stop it.

But it does matter to have the avenues of life cleared of such unnecessary obstacles as garbage. Filth not only endangers health with its potential for harmful effects, even its mere physical presence affects life in more ways than one. It hampers movement, for example. And, yes, it stinks.

So, the news stories about garbage the morning after the Sinulog should not focus on the volume produced but on how quickly and efficiently garbage is disposed of. Garbage, while unavoidable, is not what everyone wants to wake up to, even if only as a story in the papers.

On the contrary, the best way to perk up the day, especially if one is severely hung over, is to wake up to a city that is clean and cleared of garbage. Even if you only learn about the miracle in the papers, it is one story that can make you want to jump out of bed and reconnect.

It would have been best if garbage can be avoided. But that is simply not possible, not even if people wanted to. One only has to consider the immensity of the crowds and the difficulty of movement through them. To be packed in a spot like sardines leaves no one the option of even moving to put his trash in his pocket.

So forget about rules and regulations on trash disposal. It will only break your heart, on a day when you are supposed to be merry. That is why it is just better to let go and let loose, so long as in the morning after, the things that are supposed to work are working, and things that need to be done are done.