Earth Day trashy thoughts: Of turtles, sando bags and cell phones

Rice cooker, cellular phone, and kerosene lamps. They are not just another set of appliances for sale in department stores, but among the “peculiar" trash items found during the one-day nationwide effort to clean up Philippine oceans and waterways last September 19. Data provided by Geronimo Reyes to GMANews.TV showed that about 23,630 bags of marine debris were collected from at least 60 provinces in the country that joined the event. Reyes is one of the country's coordinators for the annual Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup (ICC). Eighty-two percent of the trash were recreational materials left by beachgoers. Other “peculiar or unusual" marine debris recovered by volunteers at the cleanup sites include toilet bowls, basketballs, combs, traveling bags, floormats, intrauterine devices (IUD), school bags, shavers, toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, and umbrellas. Such marine pollution, according to Reyes, contributes to the global pollution problem that affects the oceans and inland waterways. “If improperly disposed, garbage will bring health and safety hazards to people and surroundings," he said. 500,000 volunteers worldwide The efforts of about 74,493 Filipino volunteers to clean up waterways are part of Ocean Conservancy’s ICC project, which is “the world’s largest volunteer effort to clean up the environment which is conducted every third Saturday of September of each year." For its 24th year, nearly 500,000 volunteers in 108 countries around the world joined ICC to help remove trash from their local waterways. The Philippines placed second in the most number of volunteers, next only to the United States. When the cleanup was done, about 10,239,538 items of trash, weighing 7.4 million pounds, were collected in a single day. Meanwhile, among the “most heartbreaking tallies" this year is the number of dead and entangled sea creatures. In the Philippines, fortunately, no such death was recorded during the cleanup effort. However, Reyes said, most of the debris collected in the country were mostly plastic materials, particularly “sando bags"—those flimsy but convenient carrying bags of thin plastic that remain omnipresent in most grocery counters and public market stalls. Given the texture of the plastic, “sando bags" easily tear or break into pieces and are usually ingested by turtles since they mistake it for jellyfish, said Reyes. “Each year, marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds, and other animals are sickened, injured, or killed because of encounters with dangerous items we leave in the sea. They are poisoned, choked, or entangled in items ranging from leaky paint cans to empty yogurt cups to abandoned fishing gear," Ocean Conservancy said. "Sea turtles frequently mistake plastic sandwich bags for jellyfish, eating them with often deadly consequences," it added. Apathetic The Philippines, being an archipelagic country, is blessed with various water resources, including inland freshwater (rivers, lakes, and groundwater), and marine (bay, coastal, and oceanic waters). (See: State of water environmental issues) These water systems are major factors in the country’s economic growth, helping drive the engines of tourism and food industries. As to why they become polluted and their natural processes disrupted despite the benefits they provide, it is because citizens have been “apathetic" to their duty to save the environment, said Reyes. “Tingin kasi ng mga tao dapat gobyerno ang dapat maglinis ng mga kalat. Hindi nila naiisip na ang dumi sa lahat naman ng tao nagmumula yan. Hindi naman yan bumabagsak lang sa langit (People think it should be government’s task to clean up the trash. They don’t realize that the trash comes from all people and doesn’t just fall from the sky)," Reyes said in a phone interview. Aside from the people's indifference, the local government also has "very weak" programs to protect the environment. In a statement, Ocean Conservancy explained that public health is not the only one at risk when ocean ecosystems are harmed by trash. “Coastal economies lose hundreds of millions of dollars as dissatisfied beachgoers pack up and take their tourism dollars with them," it said. Trash will outlive us Dubbed as Trash Travels: From Our Hands to the Sea, Around the Globe, and Through Time, the Ocean Conservancy 2009 global report illustrated that “trash improperly discarded can travel long distances in the water" and can “outlive" people. “Trash that reaches the ocean can outlive us by generations—traveling long distances, breaking down into smaller pieces but never truly disappearing, and affecting our ocean and marine life in ways we don’t yet fully understand," it said. ‘Tabi ko, linis ko din’ If the people would start changing their behavior towards saving Mother Nature, then there is a big chance that the beauty of marine life would be preserved, Reyes said. It is high time that citizens alter the self-centered perception of “tapat ko linis ko (I clean up my frontage)" to “tabi ko, linis ko din (I clean up my surroundings too)," he said, adding "this way you can ensure that the surroundings are clean even if your neighbor would refuse to clean his front yard." "After all, garbages don't fall from heavens. They are produced by the people," he said.—JV, GMANews.TV