JOHN Lennon imagined a world with “all the people living life in peace.” President John F. Kennedy told his fellow Americans “to ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.” The late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream about an America without racism and discrimination: “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”
The Zero Waste movement and everyone who wants to live in — and pass on to children, grandchildren and all future generations — a safe, clean, healthy environment, see the “difficulties of today and tomorrow.” But they still have a dream. They still imagine. They may be dreamers, but we are not the only ones. They ask not what the environment can do for them but what they can do for the environment.
This doesn’t mean that they — we — are naive and don’t recognize the realities. I myself look at the amount of solid waste that I generate. It is shocking how many of the ordinary goods that I consume or use — juice, milk, soy sauce, peanut butter, lotion, laundry soap, you name it — come in plastic packaging, most of which can neither be reused nor recycled. It will remain in the environment forever, pollute soil, water and air. This can’t be right. How can we live with this? How can we accept it as something inevitable?
The “enormity of [the plastic] waste crisis,” to borrow from Ocean Conservancy, is obvious. With the tragedy-stricken Binaliw landfill closed, Cebu City is now desperately looking for a new, permanent disposal site for its 600-800-ton daily haul of trash. Nearby LGUs don’t want it, as accepting such volumes would quickly reduce the lifespan of their own landfills. Incidentally, 1,000 tons of trash were reportedly collected after the Sinulog Grand Parade alone. Despite finding itself in the middle of a garbage disposal crisis, Cebu City missed the opportunity to rally businesses and spectators to shun single-use plastics and other disposables.
Ask not what your LGU can do for you, but what you can do for your LGU. The benefit of waste avoidance actually returns to us. Less garbage generated, more diverted to reuse, recycling and composting, less to be hauled. This means savings. Ask not what the environment can do for you. It is time we acknowledge how the decisions we each make every day about what to consume and how to dispose of waste impact on the environment even beyond our lifetime.
This year’s International Zero Waste Month has entered its final week. The Philippine Reuse Consortium is inviting the public to visit its Plastic Solutions Exhibit on Jan. 29–31 and to interact with the Human Library (afternoon of Jan. 31) at Robinsons Galleria, Ortigas. Existing reuse and refill systems in the Philippines will be showcased. By highlighting the viability and environmental benefits of and socioeconomic opportunities offered by the reuse and refill systems, the organizers aim at getting more LGUs, business establishments, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders to invest in these or similar business models.
The public is also invited to watch the international documentary “Plastic People: The Hidden Crisis of Microplastics” on Jan. 30 (Galleria Ortigas movie house, registration at 10 a.m.). The film “investigates our addiction to plastic and the growing threat of microplastics on human health.”
Dream. Imagine. Ask what you can do. Let our legacy not be mountains of forever-trash or bioaccumulation of toxic chemicals, but a livable, biodiverse Planet Earth. True, it seems like an impossible dream, but faced with the reality of the triple planetary crisis — climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution in general, plastic pollution in particular — it is imperative not to surrender.
The Regenerate Leap
Stuart Green all but surrendered. Nine years ago, he lost his wife to a violent crime. Three young children lost their loving mother. The family was plunged into what seemed a bottomless abyss. The happy life in Bohol came to an abrupt end. Green, in his book “The Regenerate Leap: How Leaders Transform Crisis into Enduring Growth” (available on Amazon.com), narrates how he and his children came through. Like a forest after fire, they regenerated, individually and together as a family. Hours and hours of reflections and conversations, hundreds of books later, a path or framework for transforming crisis into capacity and growth emerged. A framework that “can be applied not just to individual healing, but to leadership, organizations and communities,” Dr. Alexandra Richman writes in the foreword.
Green lays out suggested reading paths (chapters). Type and stage of crisis in which the reader finds himself or his organization will determine the most relevant reading path. But one doesn’t have to be in the middle of a crisis to appreciate “The Regenerate Leap.” While the reader may not find everything applicable, he will find hope and inspiration, even between the lines.
