From wrappers to rice

Manila, Philippines -  When the school year opened last month, Rosemarie Abrigo and Mark Petilla, both aged 11, went to school carrying not just notebooks, books and pens but also something most students do not have in their bags – a plastic bag.

The bag is where they put the plastic litter they pick up in their surroundings – be it a candy wrapper, a junk food pouch, empty shampoo sachets, used sando bags, plastic cups, straw – anything that junk shops would not buy.

Rosemarie and Mark and other environmental warriors collect these discards and exchange them for rice in the “Plastic Mo, Bigas Ko, Palit Tayo” project, an innovative exchange program that addresses the problem of solid waste disposal.

Both Rosemarie and Mark told STARweek that they have received more than 10 kilos of rice each in the three times that they have turned in what they collected.

The Plastic Mo, Bigas Ko, Palit Tayo project is a brainchild of city councilor Jeslito “Jigs” Seen and his team. The redemption is held at the Leon Francisco Maramba Elementary School.

Rosemarie says she is excited every time her mom arrives from the market or grocery store; she rushes to get the plastic bags used to pack the goods. The young girl would clean the bags and put them in a sack and eagerly wait for the next round of exchanging these items.

Sitio Longos residents have become active participants in the project.

“Wala nang kalat ngayon sa bahay (There is no more litter in the house now),” she proudly says.

Mark, on the other hand, says it gives him a different kind of happiness whenever he brings home kilos of rice in exchange for his efforts collecting plastic trash.

Rosemarie and Mark belong to the 621 households in sitio Longos given tags and stubs in claiming their rewards for their active participation in this project.

Sometime in July last year, Seen was guest speaker at the Leon Francisco Maramba Elementary School and the idea came out spontaneously during his discussion with school officials led by principal Margoth Calulut about having a special project to maintain cleanliness in the area and to help in proper waste disposal.

Seen shared his thoughts on how to recycle waste materials and Calulut volunteered to draft the mechanics and guidelines of the project.

In succeeding meetings the Rotary Club of Central Pangasinan came on board, as did the Pandaragupan sa Kaunlaran, the barangay and the Parents-Teachers-Community Association (PTCA). Thus was born the Plastic Mo, Bigas Ko, Palit Tayo project where a kilo of plastic garbage collected is exchanged for a kilo of rice.

“The project is very beneficial to us and to the community,” Calulut said.

In school, children are taught proper segregation of waste products and litter is minimized in the community, she said.

There are five stages in the redemption of the rice reward: the information area where collected garbage is checked and the claimants are also checked against the master list.

Don Leon Francisco Maramba Elementary School principal Margoth Calulut says the project has inculcated discipline in the students.

Next they go to the quality control section to double check if the garbage could qualify as earlier explained.

“(The trash) that junk shops do not buy are the ones that clog our canals, so we are focusing on these,” Calulut said.

The claimants’ collected trash are then weighed by the PTCA and teachers, and brought to the dumping area and claimants are given a record signed by each chairman. This record is then presented to the redemption area where they get their rice corresponding to the volume of trash that qualified.

“We have successfully inculcated discipline among our pupils,” Calulut said. She thanked the barangay council led by chairman William Datuin for helping them out in the information education dissemination.

Thelma Jovellanos, 46, a parent and officer of the PTCA, said she is happy to see her children actively participating in the project.

“I have been living here since birth and it is only now that I can honestly see the big difference in cleanliness in our area as a result of this project,” she said in Pangasinense.

She said she is happy to see her elementary kid go home, proudly showing his collected garbage and cleaning them at once to be ready for the next redemption schedule.

The Philippine Plastic Industry Association commended the project.

Seen told STARweek that he was happy with the commendation they got last month as one of the best practices in solid management.

In almost a year of its implementation, at least two nearby towns have adopted the project, namely San Fabian and Sta. Barbara.

 “People are happy because the garbage problem in their area is being solved and at the same time we are giving them something to bring home for the family,” Seen said.

Rosemarie Abrigo weighs the plastics she collected.

Seen said he is also adopting this idea for his policy paper in his course at the University of Makati and eventually plans to form an advocacy movement so that more local government units and non-government organizations would adopt the project.

 “In other countries, you see children keeping their candy wrappers and disposing of them properly. That’s what we want to imbibe here also,” he said.

The collected piles of plastic garbage are brought by Seen’s group to a junk shop in Bulacan. Other groups also donate to his group empty plastic bottles which are in turn donated by the councilor’s group to Eat Bulaga’s television program “Plastic ni Juan” which selects public schools to receive educational facilities like chairs and tables.

“We hope we could convince more people so that more would join us in this advocacy,” he said.