Centralized MRF?

THE proposed ordinance filed by City Councilor Eugenio Gabuya Jr. seeking to establish a centralized material recovery facility (MRF) in the service area of the closed Inayawan Sanitary Landfill can be a good study on the kind of mindset the people now running the affairs at Cebu City Hall possess, at least on the matter of solid waste management. It also betrays their obsession with the Inayawan facility.

An MRF, according to Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, “shall receive mixed waste for final sorting, segr egat i on, composting, and recycling” with the residual wastes later “transferred to a longterm storage or disposal facility or sanitary landfill.” The law also made it clear that MRFs should be established in the barangays or a cluster of barangays? Why so? Common sense would tell you that “sorting, segregation, composting and recycling” can best be done in a smaller setting.

Imagine doing that task in a centralized facility in a city as big as Cebu that, according to Department of Public Services (DPS) chief Roberto Cabarrubias, generates close to 600 tons a day. Granting that the City can do the task of “sorting, segregation, composting and recycling” 600 tons of trash daily, what if the process malfunctions?

We will be faced with the same situation as that of the private transfer station also in Inayawan that already looks like a dump site because of the City’s failure to cope with the trash dumped there daily that has to be transferred to a landfill. Besides, the ordinance can be considered a form of surrender. Just because only 13 of the city’s 80 barangays have operational MRFs does not mean City Hall has to abandon the effort and come up with a centralized MRF instead?

That is bad leadership. Why can the 13 barangays comply with the provision of RA 9003 on the MRF and the 67 others cannot? Isn’t that for lack of effort by the barangays and the failure of the City to strictly supervise the MRF provision’s compliance?

Actually, the Cebu City Government has always been lackadaisical in implementing RA 9003, perhaps because its leaders feel they could not get political capital from it compared with, say, giving sardines in exchange for trash.

— Sunnex