Why Cebu-Mactan Channel smells like shit

Traveling the Cebu-Mactan Channel could be fun and exciting especially if you are taking the Metro Ferry. Metro is swift and fast as compared to public transports like vans, taxis and jeepneys. Especially at night, the view of the city could be spectacular.

Adding to the sight of Cebu from the sea, your olfactory sense could be bombarded with the different smell of urban living. Many times I could smell shit (literally) specifically on the Cebu side of the channel. Why?

Despite several ordinances in Cebu City punishing people when they throw garbage just about anywhere, its teeth remains to be false and doesn't bite at all. For example,  City Ordinance No. 1361 establishes a system of garbage collection and imposition of fees for violators and even several amendments have been done, among them the amendment ordering its residents to segregate their wastes. No segregation, no collection they claimed. But I am pretty sure someone somewhere in the Labangon area is not segregating his wastes but still their garbage is being taken by disposal trucks. On the creeks near barangay (village) Guadalupe, people just throw their garbage on the dry riverbed to be taken by flash floods to the sea.

What's my point?

Photo courtesy of Cebu Daily News

Cebuanos made the sea their infinite garbage bins. Every day I encounter long stretches of garbage in the channel. Even the sea currents refused to take them to show Cebu what they have done to the sea.

Another case to prove my point that coastal cleanups initiated by local governments and the private sector are just for show. Or cleanups are additional pogi points to get that funding support from international entities?

Wish on Earth Day

I wish more people cared about earth as much as they cared about who they believed created it.

What is the significance of Earth Day? National Geographic answers- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110422-earth-day-google-doodle-web-green-tech-2011-environment/

The floods helped Manila clean up

I saw this article in Inquirer.net and I believe, is worth a reprint here. 

For so long, Manila and its suburbs have not done their share of cleaning up. The government agencies were inutile enough to dismiss this as a problem and focused instead on corruption, a not so alien job with our government agencies and also with the corrupted and corrupt people of the Philippines. The typhoon Ondoy became history and so was (is?) the tragedy that surrounded Manila.

Not so long time ago, the Supreme Court ordered government agencies to cleanup Manila Bay, an obvious choice because everybody could see it. But until now, they still pass the buck, blaming everyone but not everybody on who was not cleaning up and instead showed us how much paper work they already have done.

So nature did its share of cleaning up. The harsh way.

We have the most beautiful malls and dirtiest esteros

by Thelma Sioson San Juan

Philippine Daily Inquirer/Inquirer.net

ALYA CUT out the "hello" on the phone and instead sobbed straight into my ear. I could hear more sobbing than words. I finally did make out what she was trying to say: Our friend Joseph, who lives in San Juan, had to swim out of his house when the water rose up to its second story. Seeing the water rising to his knees, he decided to swim out with his loved one and only housemate—Princess, a dachshund.

They had been swimming away from his house, he doing the backstroke so Princess could perch on his chest, when the current grew stronger. He flipped to swim free style, with Princess still swimming alongside him, but they were being sucked towards the river. Joseph was able to grip a steel pole.

Glancing beside him, he saw Princess already way beyond his reach and being spun into the current towards the river.

That was what Alya was sobbing about—Princess’ death and Joseph’s near-death.

Turned out, that tragedy—no matter that we love Joseph and Princess—was not, by any measure, unique last weekend. There were far, far worse.

Metro Manila and the outlying provinces were one big tragedy. A tragedy waiting to happen.

While “Ondoy” dumped the highest rainfall in decades, still, what happened was a man-made disaster.

The past decades we’ve been building the most beautiful malls, gated subdivisions and high-rises—amid the dirtiest esteros and unkempt neighborhoods. In fact, Metro Manila is at its filthiest.

Cities have been overrun with squatters, many of these settlements in esteros—coddled by city mayors who could use their vote.

The mountains, from the north to the south, have been shaved of trees. Environment advocates have to fight tooth and nail to protect the trees, even right in the urban landscape, like Katipunan Ave. (It is ironic coincidence “Ondoy” struck as environment and waste recycling activist Odette Alcantara was being laid to rest.)

And the rivers—the Pasig River stinks. Peer down on Manila Bay and you see plastic bags, food wrappers and all kinds of debris floating.

When disaster strikes, as it did this week, you could count the government’s rubber boats with your 10 fingers. People using toy floaters to save people—this tragic sight is in a country where billions of pesos go into the pork barrel of politicians and government officials, and that’s not even counting what’s in the coffers of local officials.

Clearly, the environment and infrastructure have been suffering from sheer neglect.

Indeed, the unimpeded degradation of the environment is matched only by unconscionable corruption and greed of government. It’s bad governance that’s been our real disaster.

The nouveau riche sprucing up the house with opulent furniture and decor, but never bothering to clean up the house and unclog the toilet—that’s our “disaster lifestyle.”

Photos from deputy-dog.com (and you think your garbage is overflowing?)

If you have nothing good to say- blog it!

From afar, Catbalogan is just one of the cities of the Philippines. Ordinary, laid back, nothing more. But when you are at the center of all of Catbalogan, the experience is entirely frustrating if not yucky.

The city (by all standards it is not!) is a place where everyone, from children down to standbys in the corner, from the padyak drivers to students and professionals, is a big wastebasket case. And I mean a real waste basket. If it is not clear enough to you- the place is a garbage lot. A big one. 

People (read- everyone!) just throw their waste just about everywhere! Streets. Open sewer. The sea.

I don't know if it is a cultural thing but they do and blatantly do it! Sometimes I consider Warays to be the dirty citizens of the world. But there is Tacloban too, and by affiliation, they are Warays, too. I bet they would protest! But Calbayog (also Warays) is just like that, throwing garbage everywhere, six or seven years ago, my last visit to the place.

I could have shoot several proofs on this matter but it would make myself unclean and I don't want to remember that.

One time, in one of the visits to Catbalogan, that city (which is not a city by all standards, I repeat) a whole mountain of garbages (sic, to make my point clear) could be found everywhere. The problem? The city government and the provincial government could not agree on whose responsibility it was to collect the garbage. Isn't that weird?

And Warays on that side of the world seemed to be at home with dirt and everything dirty! Ewww!

Green 101: How To Make A Garbage Dump Without Any Permits to Accomplish

This is how the residents of Lim's Compound at Villalon Drive, East Capitol Site, Cebu City throw their garbage. To make it worst, the owner or assuming that the handymen received instructions from the owner, burn this dumpsite from time to time.

What a lovely way to burn...