Mandaue offers grocery for recyclable waste

CEBU, Philippines - Mandaue City residents can now exchange their recyclable waste with groceries, starting next week, under the city’s Basura Ko, Mapahimuslan Ko program.

This after the city government, represented by Mayor Jonas Cortes, and the Sulong Mandauehanong Kabus, or SUMAKA, Incorporated, a city-based non-government organization, yesterday signed a memorandum of agreement for the implementation of the program.

The city had also alloted P500,000, which will be used to purchase the grocery items—such as noodles, canned goods, etcetera — that will be exchanged for the recyclable waste a particular resident has segregated from his or her residence.

SUMAKA, under the MOA, is tasked to name a coordinator in every sitio of the city’s 27 barangays and purchase the grocery items to be delivered to their chosen coordinators. Each barangay will also set up its own center where the residents could bring their recyclable waste for exchanging these with groceries.

"The recyclable and reusable waste materials shall be brought to the exchange center at the sitio by the households for conversion into individual points in exchange of reward materials, ... as documented by the staff of the City Environment and Natural Resources Office,” the MOA states.

Engineer Ricardo Mendoza, head of the CENRO, explained that the program will work like playing games at arcades in the malls where there will be tickets.

"Let's say one kilo of plastic is equal to10 points. You choose what commodity you would like to exchange your accumulated points with,” said Mendoza.

For the program to succeed, the city government also partnered with a big recycling company that will buy all the gathered recyclable waste brought by households to the exchange centers. The proceeds from this transaction will be used again to purchase more grocery items to continue the program.

Cortes said the city has came up with this kind of program to minimize its volume of garbage, which had already reached 450 tons per day.

The mayor also signed a separate MOA yesterday with the University of Cebu-Lapu-Lapu and Mandaue, or UCLM, to tap the interns of the latter’s College of Criminology in checking people who throw their garbage indiscriminately. “It’s like an awareness type of program,” said Mendoza.

At least 50 Criminology students, to be trained under the supervision of the Mandaue City Police Office, will be detailed to key areas in the city.

The city government will also study the possibility of enabling these students to issue citation tickets on people seen littering in the city. —/RAE (FREEMAN)