SWM Waste Inspections

November 14 and 15, 2012 Waste Inspections

Barangay Guadalupe



T-Ting's smiling face.He works for the NGO Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation (CCEF)
and helped us with the evaluations

Solid Waste Management is managed by the Municipal Environmental and Natural Resources Office (MENRO) I work out of. One of the first things I noticed and was so happy to see is how clean and trash free it is here in Leyte. I was a member of one of two teams going out to do waste segregation inspections in our barangays. This gave me a very close up and personal view of how many people live. Mostly things are very nice. Many are living in what I would consider a great backpacking campsite where I'm planning to stay a week.



People are living along this stream in dirt floored nipa huts. They said they used a community CR or the one that said she had a CR was a hole in the ground in the corner of the hut. The hole was about 7 feet from the stream and I'm sure the sewage was going straight into the stream.

 

Chicken in a basket

These are everywhere



thes people had an amazing garden

and she crossed a tomatoe with something else, I think eggplant and
is growing these crazy plants she calls Mickey Mouse

They grow and eat alot of eggplant here

I see this all the time; orchids with empty eggs on the leaf ends.
 I thought maybe it was some kind of fertility symbolism but was told it's good for the plants, gives them vitamins.



 We went door to door and I would say good morning, do you have waste segregation, where are the receptacles, do you have a compost pit, where is the compost pit, do you have a CR (comfort room/bathroom) and where is your CR? Maayong buntag, nia basurahan, asa basurahan, nia compost pit, asa compost pit, nia CR and asa CR?

Conalum High School

Barangay Conalum was amazingly clean. The High School campus was spotless and they’d recycled and reused plastic liter pop bottles for planters hanging everywhere. Conalum’s receptacles were well marked and obviously used regularly, unlike the ones in Guadalupe which were all empty and appeared to have been put in place just prior to our arrival. My team went to 70 households. Every one of them had a neat compost pit full of nothing but compost. Only two of them had a few pieces of plastic trash. Conalum deserved and won the P1000 first prize presented to them at our founding day celebration.

While making the rounds in Conalum I saw and asked what the tall spindly trees were with the black berries? Coffee!!! I spoke with a man sitting there. He said there’s no market for it so the farmer’s stopped taking care of them. I’m buying a kilo and planning to experiment with roasting them and see if I can get a descent cup of coffee out of them. Maybe we’ll sell some coffee at the bar-b-que stand Alex is re-opening and develop a market for them.

Coffee!!!!

 We walked about two miles up a road that seemed to go on forever with home after home that seem to go on forever as well. The road was being paved with concrete and this is the way they build with concrete here. Small batches at a time.