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September 19, 2010


magazine the green revolution The Sunday Times


Law, which was suspended eight years ago after first being introduced in 1996.


The Anti-Littering Law prohibits travelers, on foot or on wheels, to throw trash or any object in receptacles other than designated trash bins. The regulation also covers objects obstructing pedes- trian sidewalks, the cleanliness of surrounding areas in your home or building, and illegally placed billboards, signages, and tarps. Persons found violating the rules are either fined P500, or P1,000, depending on the violation, or subjected to eight or 16 hours of community service. The official MMDA Twitter


account (twitter.com/MMDA) reported that “190 litterbugs [were] caught on the first day of Anti- Littering Re-implementation.” If strict and proper implementa- tion keeps up, Metro Manila will finally have a fighting chance at being truly clean and green. It’s time that Filipinos learned to be more concerned with our surroundings, more conscious of the harmful effects that littering has to the environment. To make sure you will not be one of those caught by the MMDA Environmental Enforcers (EE) in mint green uniforms, here are some tips:


1. Keep a small pouch in your bag to throw candy wrappers or other small trash in temporarily if no


NO LITTER, NO PROBLEM! T


» BY KARLA ANGELICA G. PASTORES EDITORIAL CONSULTANT


HE Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) has recently re-implemented the Anti-Littering


garbage bin is immediately available. If you’re a guy who does not carry bags, keep it in your pocket. Otherwise, you’re pocket will be P500 emptier if you’re caught throwing trash in the street. 2. Few things are worse for a pedestrian than getting gum stuck to their shoe because of a careless gum chewer. If you must chew gum, keep the wrapper to store the gum afterwards. And then throw the whole lot into the proper bin. 3. If you’re a coffee-loving pedestrian on the go, it’s a good idea to bring your own refillable coffee tumblers or cups. That way, you won’t have to worry about throwing out your coffee cups after every drink. Once you’re done with your morning coffee, you can then use your tumbler to drink water after a harrowing rush hour commute. 4. For those with cars, always have a litter bag inside. We know that drivers and passengers alike love to munch on something while on the road, especially if traffic is heavy. Having a litter bag in the car will help tremendously in storing coffee cups, empty French fries containers, and used tissues. Plus, it will keep your car looking nicer and more organized. 5. Know when the garbage truck comes to collect household trash. The


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■ Metropolitan Manila Development Authority message to pedestrians and motorists: “Do not litter.”


Anti-Littering Law also covers putting trash out in front of your house at an improper time. Make sure to put out the trash on the collection day itself. It might also be a good idea to have a decent-looking trash bin near the side of your home to store garbage bags temporarily. It wouldn’t hurt to keep your house from not looking like a garbage dump.


6. Recycle! Probably the oldest advice in the book, recycling would drastically reduce the amount of trash your household throws out weekly. For families with schoolchildren, plastic bottles and glass jars can still be used for arts and craft projects. 7. If you own an establishment or


a building, make sure there are properly marked trash cans in every floor, and one or two outside. Owners of dirty buildings are also subject to the fines of the Anti-Littering Law. It is also a well-known fact that people will more likely litter in a place that is already spoiled than in one that is clean. Having a clean establishment will then make it less likely that customers will litter, leading to an arrest by an MMDA EE.


Approximately half of all litter are thrown out by motorists and pedestrians. If everyone did their share in keeping our surroundings clean and litter-free, then we would have a healthier, more beautiful place to live in.


‘Buhos’ climate change documentary lauded


BUHOS—a documentary about climate change produced and presented by Sen. Loren Legarda at the Cinema 3 of SM Mall of Asia on September 13, was cited as a significant contribution in educating the entire nation on the devastating impact of climate change and global warming to our country. “It had to take [typhoons] Ondoy,


Pepeng and Basyang for us to realize that climate change is not just a scientific and environmental issue, but an all encompassing threat to our basic human rights—food, potable water, shelter, decent livelihood and life itself,“ the chairman of the Senate Committee on Climate Change told guests from the diplomatic corps, academe, student leaders, environ- mentalists, nongovernment organiza- tions and local government officials. Legarda who grew up in flood prone Malabon, made the worsen- ing flood situation central to the theme of her new documentary on


climate change, entitled Buhos (Downpour). The senator collaborated with acclaimed Filipino filmmaker and 2009 Cannes best director Brillante Mendoza, who lent artistic credence to produce a visually interesting, informative and most importantly, moving documentary. Buhos successfully demystifies global warming by bringing it down to the level of day-to-day living, offering easy to understand scientific explanations of greenhouse gases and climate change, as well as realistic ways of addressing this clear and present danger, in the context of Filipino living.


As chairman of the Senate Standing and Oversight Committees on Climate Change, Senator Legarda principally authored and sponsored landmark environmental laws—the Climate Change Act of 2009, the Environmental Awareness Educa- tion Act, the Ecological Solid Waste


■ Sen. Loren Legarda and indie film director Brillante Mendoza


Management Act and the Clean Air Act, among others. Buhos was launched with the support of SM Cinema and will have additional special screenings in select theaters, schools and universities in the coming months.


You can have Buhos copied and give to everyone to make them aware of climate change and I will not call you pirate, Legarda said, adding that her office will be opened for anyone who wants a copy of the said documentary.


ALEX MAGNO tells us in his September 11 column that we should be concerned about potential mining investors turning their sights away from the country and to Afghanistan. We are talking about billions of dollars, yes, but where does the bulk of the money really go? Not to us. The Arroyo administration’s mineral policy, which continues to be followed in the absence of President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s definitive stand, allows purely foreign-owned and-controlled companies to own our land and minerals. Most of the profit goes to them, but the policy even gives them much more of the share through all sorts of incentives. But foreign profit is maximized without significant benefits to national development. Government officials will be participating in this year’s mining convention, which came to a close only yesterday, but their continued pandering to foreign interests cannot hide the fact that mining has not contributed more than 2 percent to our gross domestic product since 1974, and not more than 1 percent to employ- ment from 2006 to 2008. We get too little in return for the exploitation of our mineral resources, and yet we also have to pay for it so many times over. The reason why communities, local governments, church groups and environmentalists oppose mining as it is practiced today is because the environmental and social costs far outweigh the opportunities the industry has to offer. Mining continues to strip our land and forests, poison our water, and threaten other livelihoods such as agriculture and fisheries. It also continues to displace farms and communities, undermine both human rights and local autonomy and even threaten the lives of people who have chosen to fight back.


This double exploitation is


Connect the producer to consumer


E had a fruitful visit to Iloilo last weekend and heard the


story of how P2,500 in 1986 turned into billions of microfinance funds available to at least 200,000 clients of Taytay Sa Kauswagan Inc. (TSKI or “Taytay” as they are popularly referred to) today. We met Angel de Leon Jr., one of the founders of “Taytay” who was tasked to grow that initial P2,500 into one of todays’ biggest microfinance companies. Other than being a sustainable enterprise, de Leon now envisions TSKI to reach out to not only more clients, but to consumers and the general public who will soon use products made by TSKI’s micro entrepreneurs. There are also stages in a poor


person’s life. He starts as subsist- ence poor (hand to mouth exist- ence), then graduates to become a laboring poor using his hands and feet and brains to find work and finally graduates to become an entrepreneurial poor or E-Poor, who starts a micro enterprise and is able to start not only a sustain- able business but for some to graduate into our successful small entrepreneurs. Small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) then become our employment genera- tors and they indeed make the economy run, with about 900,000 SMEs providing most of the jobs in this country. De Leon’s group has touched many lives over their almost 25 years in existence, providing them that one chance or break to breakaway from poverty. Now, we just have to replicate what they have done and they are selflessly sharing all these information with everyone under their Microfinance Success Institute headed by the indefatigable “salesperson “named Rey Ambao.


Ambao met with the ECHOtrio several times in the past and is now ready to connect his pro- ducer-clients to producers, restaurant operators, groceries and supermarkets and of course, specialty stores like ECHOstore. One restaurant group we can possibly connect to is the Café Laguna group which started in Cebu and is now present in SM Iloilo under Choy Tan and his business partner Janice Balagon. We happened to meet the creator of Café Laguna, Lita Urbina and daughter Jill, who operate a total of six successful Café Laguna outlets around the country. They are looking into getting organically grown vegetables for their shops from TSKI communities and this is the connection ECHOstore so wonderfully discovered. Tan will soon get his vegetables from the Iloilo microenterprises who are clients of TSKI. See the easy


CHIT JUAN


connection? When Urbina got wind of our plan, she right away volunteered to get all their vegetable requirements from TSKI as well. This is a market less known to micro producers who often dream of supplying huge supermarkets but they soon find out they need to scale up produc- tion, which they are not ready to do, much less financially equipped to do. So Café Laguna was a low hanging fruit that we plucked to start the ball rolling, so to speak. Sustainability is not new to Lita, who started her business almost 20 years ago with P300 and six children to feed on her husband’s meager salary as an army doctor. In 1991, she merely wanted to earn her family’s “food budget” without any business plan or grand financial design. All she wanted was to “earn” her family’s meals. Well, she did more than that. She now employs hundred of people, runs more than six restaurants, a catering service and is a multi-awarded woman entrepreneur. Beyond sustaining her growing family, she now looks to giving back by helping the likes of TSKI’s microentrepreneurs and helping them get into market. How wonderful to see a


successful organization like TSKI, a successful entrepreneur like Lita, a successful franchisee like Tan and a soon to be successful microentrepreneur who is still nameless because he or she could be anyone from among 200,000 microfinance clients who are looking for that one break, the break that will make them break away from poverty.


Let us look for more connections like these in our midst. Are we giving back when we are successful so that others may succeed as well? Each one of us can just think of sustainability and the rest of the equation will solve itself. Think of yours and think of theirs. Then everyone can be sustainable.


Chit Juan is an owner and founder of ECHOstore sustainable lifestyle at Serendra and Podium. She often speaks to women’s groups, the youth and corporates on various subjects like CSR, Social Entrepreneurship and the Environment. Visit www.echostore.ph or follow her on twitter.com/chitjuan.


Haribon defends proposed anti-mining policy


enshrined in the 1995 Mining Act, former President Gloria Arroyo’s Executive Order 270-A that calls for the aggressive promotion of large-scale mining, and the National Minerals Action Plan, which is why Haribon and its fellow member organizations in Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) calls for the scrapping of all three. But the alliance hopes to take a step further by connecting these policies to the global corporate trend of unsustain- able and unjust extraction, production, and consumption. ATM recommends that the new Medium-Term Philippine Develop- ment Plan drop the revitalization of the mining industry in favor of agricultural development, as government data itself shows that agriculture will bring in more jobs and benefits to the people, plus more profit for the government. Agro- forestry, ecotourism and watershed development, including fisheries resource development are all feasible alternatives to large-scale mining. Artisanal and indigenous


community-based small-scale mining is a potential alternative, because it has not permanently harmed the environment and also because the minerals derived are used to produce goods/materials necessary for everyday use. Their kind of mining technology can be further improved with the assurance that they will also benefit from the proper management of their lands and resources. In fact, to say that large-scale mining in the Philippines has no monopoly on “proper mining” is an understatement. Despite the best mining technology available with big capital, open pit mining, the most destructive and least expensive type, is still the most- employed method in the country. Lafayette’s Rapu-Rapu project, touted as the flagship for foreign


mining, had two separate tailing spills that resulted to fish kills. Mining companies have failed to rehabilitate at least three abandoned and inactive mines; only the Philippine Pyrite mine in Western Samar is currently undergoing rehabilitation. As our priority should be the conservation of minerals for future generations, we call for the Philip- pines to only be open for mining after establishing that mining is the best and most economically beneficial use of the land. And if we must extract the minerals, we should do so only according to our needs, based on a sound economic framework and ensure that our agro-industrialization should entail the establishment of downstream industries and the charting of natural resource manage- ment and economic development plans that are consistent with Philippine Agenda 21. We must enable ourselves to process our own minerals if we are to exact the most profit from them.


The new minerals policy must also provide environmental and socioeco- nomic safeguards to local communi- ties affected by mining. Human rights, indigenous peoples’ ownership over resources in ancestral domains, and local government authority must be respected and upheld. And to pave the way for the equitable sharing of benefits, the provision allowing for 100 percent foreign ownership must be with- drawn, while corporate transpar- ency and accountability must be implemented. We can do better than promote and protect foreign interests—we can promote and protect our own.


For more information contact Blas R. Tabaranza Jr., Tel. nos. (632) 434-4642, (632)911-6089; e-mail: director@haribon.org.ph


GREEN SPACE


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