Agriculture Business Week

Metro Manila and other cities in the Philippines are in a quandary over garbage. The landfills are filled and full to the brim like running-over septic tanks. Concerned citizens in landfill areas are led to barricade the entrance with their own selves. Some time back in Rodriguez, Rizal, the mayor even led a human barricade.

Years ago, I suggested to the barangay captain of the barangay where I live that a barangay composting center be set up. The barangay captain replied, saying, “mahirap, e,” meaning, it would be difficult. With a dash of political will, however, anything is possible.

In 2008, I again trekked to the barangay office with the same suggestion that a barangay composting center and a materials recovery facility be established in accordance with Republic Act 9003, or the Solid Waste Management Act. To the new barangay captain and to the kagawads heading concerned committees, I presented a letter aimed at introducing a waste management scheme to each barangay constituent, together with my research and supporting papers and information materials related thereto, for the barangay council’s consideration. Two months passed, however, and I have yet to hear about waste management being tackled by the barangay before its constituents.

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Would you like to use your kitchen leftovers and biodegradable garbage-like peelings of squash, banana, and pineapple; stalks of malunggay; unusable leaves of cabbage and pechay – as fertilizer for your vegetables and other crops planted in your garden?

It’s easy. Just build basket composts. “Basket composting is the process by which your home garbage, garden and farm waste and leguminous plants are allowed to rot in baskets which are half buried in garden plots,” explains Roy C. Alimoane, director of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC) Foundation, Inc. in Kinuskusan, Bansalan, Davao del Sur.

Basket composting is a central feature of the, Food Always In The Home (FAITH), a vegetable gardening technology which the MBRLC has developed. “This type of gardening can provide the necessary protein, vitamins, and mineral requirements needed by a family with six members,” Alimoane says.

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The huge amount of vegetable refuse generated everyday at the trading posts, bagsakan centers and public markets could be an excellent source of fully decomposed compost that vegetable growers can use if this is processed the right way.

In some places, vegetable refuse is simply brought to a material recovery facility (MRF) where it is allowed to decompose the natural way. In other places like Central Luzon State University (CLSU), people in-charge of its MRF claim to apply some beneficial microorganisms on the biomass that is brought there. However, the biomass is applied with beneficial microorganisms, simply to dry up the natural way.

According to Bayani L. Profugo, president and general manager of Bens Agribusiness Corporation, vegetable refuse and other biomass can be processed quickly into compost if its solid and liquid content are first separated from each other using a dewatering equipment.

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