This is dedicated to the memory of my Mom who died November 2009. I will always be your baby, Mama. We will always love and miss you.
Several years ago, I probably got fed up with all the motherhood statements given out in the election campaign period that I started a “specific series” in a small corner of the webworld. The problems are still here so its probably worth reiterating the old ideas plus new ones developed since then.
We are currently in the throes of another election. Some harp on the lack of platforms from candidates to our Presidency. If we are shown platforms, it will likely be too general.
But unless anyone knows something we don’t; there will be a new Filipino President this year, platform or no platform. Anyone not satisfied with a candidate’s platform or non platform can very well make up his/her own.
-We are still having a problem with illegal loggers. We are listed as #3 of the top 10 countries with the highest deforestation rates in the world. We are listed with -32%, topnotcher Honduras has -37% and 2nd place Nigeria has -36%. (www.treehugger.com)
A Negros Oriental forest has lost 40% of its area from its total 5,000 hectares in 1998. (www.illegal-logging.info). An article on the Philippine Star (9-17-09) by Manny Galvez reports that illegally cut logs are now being spirited out via the Pacific ocean to bypass checkpoints.
Part of the training of our soldiers takes place in military camps like FortMagsaysay. One recommendation to augment men for forest preservation is that the training of our Armed Forces be spread out to our protected forest for their jungle/forest training. They will be armed and can fend off or easily scare away even armed illegal loggers. A rotation basis can easily prevent familiarization of illegal loggers to AFP officers also.
-How we deal with garbage/trash is linked to our health. The less that we have to deal with will undoubtedly lead to a greater chance of having a healthy life.
I have always wondered why a lot of fastfood restaurants serve their diners with food packed in excessive wrappings even when such diners dine in. It’s like a fashion statement among fastfood stores. Stores with more class serve you sandwiches on plates.
In the leading hamburger restaurants; one can readily see such excessive paper or plastic wrappings being used to cover food that are devoured in less than 10 minutes inside the stores themselves. If you go to the low end however, they are able to make do with small wrappers that comprise of small square wrappers that are open on 2 sides. Even an appropriate sized wax paper envelope wrapper will do the work that the large wax paper wrap sheets the big players utilize.
There is simply just too much waste.
They serve fries on paper cartons when reusable cups can function the same way for those who eat inside the stores.
If you go back to the largest burger sold by a/the popular brand; it is packed inside a large paper carton box though the large burger itself is still wrapped again in a square wrapper that are open on 2 sides also.
If you go to a particular high end pizza joint; with the price they charge, you’d think they could afford to pay extra help to wash glasses and dishes for diners who dine in. Instead, they always serve disposable paper plates, disposable plastic utensils and cups. Their sodas come in aluminum cans. Their iced teas are the ones that come in glass containers.
Well at least one coffee shop allows clients to buy signature cups that can be reused with discounts.
It is inevitable that these wrappers themselves get soiled with the juice, sauce, etc… of the food contained in them. Unlike what is done when dealing with reusable utensils and cups wherein the food and liquids are removed as they are cleaned, these disposable items are packed for disposal along with all the leftovers which makes them very bulky. You can even see a sizable effluent or the markings of it in the bottom of the disposal bags that a single hole can lead to a large of spill of its dirty contents on the way for disposal or recycling.
It might be feasible to place a specific tax on the use of these wrappers. Such a tax might encourage owners to shift to reusable items for those who elect to dine in and might even decrease the use of paper sheets to cover trays. Or even hire additional personnel to do the washing. Those who order for take out or delivery will necessarily bear the tax. Considering the clientele who would prefer take-outs, they can afford the additional tax. A family from the lower end who would decide to eat those meals is likely to eat inside those stores anyway and not order one for take out.
These could lessen the burden on our natural resources like paper, lessen the burden on garbage disposal and recycling centers, as well as less transport of garbage with possible spillage.
If these restaurants are actually good at transporting and disposing their garbage in the first place, then why do the outside of their stores smell like rotting food and rancid oil?
Composting at sites. It may also be beneficial to have wetmarkets especially new ones to assign areas for composting at sites. Many of the garbage from wetmarkets are biodegradable anyway.
When this garbage are loaded into trucks and compacted; one can see “juice” flowing out of the trucks. Imagine garbage trucks hauling them off, transporting them to far away dumpsites and all the while the effluent drips (sometimes the garbage itself) to the road, stinking all the way. This not only stinks but is quite a source of food for flies, etc…
Quite a burden on our health. We set up long buffet tables for these varmints and they repay us by making us sick. Probably serves us right.
Composting at site will also prevent the garbage from lingering too long in the open where they serve as a banquet for these pests. The product of composting can also be used for plant based industries as fertilizers. For areas that produce large quantities of biodegradable waste, maybe cargo containers will do that can be transported to other areas where the composting may be completed.
-Water. The world bank in 2004 estimated that 1.6 billion Pesos in economic loss was caused by water pollution.
From 1996 to 2000, about a third of monitored diseases were waterborne. That alone resulted in additional 3.3 billion Pesos annual health cost that could have been avoided if not for water pollution.
The Muntinlupa public market with the technical help of USAID through the Local Initiatives for Affordable Wastewater Treatment (LINAW) project put up nearly 4 years ago their own wastewater treatment plant. The recycled water is good enough for toilet use, cleaning, and watering plants. Quite good considering the input source includes toilet water itself aside from waste water from the eateries and the stalls.
Even malls and resorts are replicating wastewater treatment based on Carlito Santos, Jr.’s (consultant of LINAW) design.
It might be worthy to take advantage of LINAW’s technology and put up treatment plants for large buildings of the National Government such as universities/colleges, etc…. Armed with LINAW’s knowledge; the National Government may embark on large scale waste water treatment and/or assist LGUs in putting up their own.
It might be worth considering desilting our inland bodies of water. Well for one thing, at least their capacity to hold water is increased. An increase that might serve us well during the dry season. And it will take longer for them to swell when the floods come.
Botswana was able to put up several small scale solar desalination units made up of concrete, glass, etc… If I remember right, one unit costs about 15 thousand pesos in their Pula currency. The output was small but a number of units were able to sustain small communities with fresh drinking water. Some saline water is added to the distillate as the distillate itself tends to be bland. This may be considered for far away communities who have no other source of potable water in certain times of the year.
We may even be able to resurrect our polluted bodies of water. Natto based preparations, coco peat, or Moringa powder may be used to serve as a flocculant to ease the removal of contaminants in our waters. Natto based purification is extensively used by the Japanese. They even have an emergency purification truck using Natto based technology for use during disasters an d even uses wind powered generators to provide needed electricity for the purification process.
Coco peat or Moringa based purification will at least utilize domestic resources.
-Malunggay- Sometime ago, there was a TV series about a superhero that had the power of elasticity. His alter ego however was an accomplished inventor/discoverer. He was able to come up with a medicine that treated a variable lot of illnesses and he called it Ampa-Lunggay.
Though both components of his herbal medicine are known for their medicinal value, the latter one is known for more varied uses.
Malunggay (Moringa oleifera) is being touted as a food source, antibiotic source, oil source, water purifier, etc….
That it is a food source is without doubt as it can be served as a salad or boiled in soup. And that gives it an edge over jatropha as a possible renewable source of biofuel besides being very much less toxic. Both jatropha and Moringa are claimed to be able to produce oil that can be used as biodiesel. Another remarkable thing is that different parts of the Moringa plant can be used for those same varied uses including the leftovers.
The leaves are used for food and for medicinal uses while oil can be extracted from the seeds. After extraction, the resulting seed cake can be used to purify water as a flocculant.
Malunggay or Moringa act as positively charged particles that bind with negatively charged particles like silt, clay, etc…. which then settle to the bottom.
It might be worthwhile to promote large scale Moringa farming for its varied uses.
(A female Senator is claimed to distribute seeds of Moringa to advocate its production and should be commended for it.)
-Topsoil (About the upper 30 cm layer of soil) takes years and years to develop that some even regard it as one the Earth’s most vital resources. On top of that, it is easily damaged. A loss of about 75 billion tons of soil is estimated annually worldwide.
Yet when land is converted from plant production into other uses; there is little regard as to what happens to topsoil in those areas. Good if the topsoil will be used for plants again. But a sizable part will end up as “fillers” (panambak).
It might be worthwhile to pursue a policy that such large disturbance of topsoil for whatever reason will be required to have the topsoil removed to be devoted for plant use again by the owner. It may however be bequeathed to the Local and/or National government to do so as it wishes in regard to being used for plant use.
-Floods- Luis Zosa, a project consultant of the CAMANAVA flood control project once claimed that Manila could be sinking anywhere from 2 to 9 centimeters a year. This was said to be due to subsidence. Helped along by global warming, this is claimed to substantially contribute to the floods that devastate us year in and year out.
Subsidence is gradual sinking of landforms to a lower level. A main cause in subsidence is the extraction of groundwater. If one goes to the urban poor areas, one could note that the urban poor rely heavily on the extraction of groundwater. Even some housing subdivisions still rely on pumped groundwater to supply their water needs.
As large volumes of groundwater are extracted, the soil consolidates and the ground level sinks. Sometime sinkholes even develop.
The country experiences a dry and wet season. During the dry season, there is hardly enough water. During the wet season, there is just too much of it. Right now, the water levels of our dams are alarmingly low. But during the height of the typhoon season, in the midst of a storm itself, a number of these dams itself released their waters to further devastate already inundated lands and swollen rivers.
Several years ago, I had already pondered if such water can be returned to recharge the groundwater. Turns out that it was already being done for several years. One of the most well known example is that of the Groundwater replenishment system in Orange county California ( http://www.gwrsystem.com/index.html ) . This is basically a large scale ASR (Aquifer Storage and Recovery).
One remarkable thing about the system in Orange county is that they start with sewer water. Sewer water is treated and purified and can be sent back to a sea water intrusion barrier. This can prevent something that has happened to several areas in Cebu wherein many wells are no longer potable because seawater has already mixed with the well water to a large part that the salinity level is too high for human use. Purifying their sewage water also reduces the amount of sewer water that is discharged into their ocean.
Treated sewer water can also be sent to spreading basins where they seep into the ground and mix with the groundwater just like how rain does. From the spreading basins, the water then soaks into the soil. The treated water also serves to dilute the groundwater when they blend together.
Orange county thus is able to pump out their groundwater for their use and are able to replenish it.
Though Orange county uses spreading basins to recharge their groundwater, direct injection is utilized in other areas like the Rocky mountains.
Maybe it would be worthwhile to engage in our own groundwater replenishment system though it need not as high tech as the one in Orange county. Appropriate use of rechargeable groundwater might just see us through the dry season and prevent the Philippines from further sinking into the ocean.
Or we can always dump the overflowing waters from our dams onto the surface land when the storms are here where they can continue to decimate lives, livestock, property, erode our soil, etc…
There are about 4 major groundwater reservoirs in the Philippines located in Cagayan, Central Luzon, Agusan, and Cotabato. Other areas can also be considered for smaller scale ASR.
And given that Orange county starts with waste water and we can start with the water in our dams; I say we have a good head start on the process already. How bad can the waters in our dams be compared to California’s waste water? Well just in case it is that bad, maybe we can throw in some Moringa seeds. We’ll just have to decide how much treatment dam waters need to have if we opt for direct injection instead of spreading basins. Harvested rain water may also be considered for groundwater replenishment system or even direct use. The flat tops of several malls come to mind but since some malls already treat their waste water, their probably seeing into this already.
Other methods of Aquifer recharge are drainage wells, sinkhole injections, water traps, …
-Filipino, feed thyself. Doing miracles or not, this is something Filipinos must really achieve. We must attain food security. I have always previously written in now long dead websites that the Philippines must consider attaining self sufficiency on food.
No doubt that semiconductors, microchips, etc… by weight would beat agricultural products in term of price. But with the Global Financial Crisis and semiconductor industries in the Philippines started closing one by one, I would say that it still hasn’t made a semiconductor wafer edible. When we had problems with our staples, we had to go to our agricultural neighbors for what we can be growing on our own land.
Ramesh Sivanpillai and Thomas Thurow studied the effects of Hurricane Mitch (285 km/h) in Nicaragua and Honduras as to cause landslides (Some areas received more than 18 inches of rain in one day. Ondoy was recorded delivering nearly 18 inches of rain in one day though a 6 hour span delivered 13.5 inches). They found that terracing treatments were able to prevent landslides from starting from terrace blocks. Of the terrace fields studied, no landslides originated from the terraces. Terraces that were damaged by landslide had the landslides starting from cleared areas upslope of the damaged terraces.
The United Nations in a report “Convention to Combat Desertification” noted the technology employed by the Ifugao farmers. The report cited the safe drainage of excess water from one terrace to the next one.
Terraces are known to slow down the speed of water thereby allowing the soil to absorb more run-off water. They are able to act as dams holding rainwater and allowing it to seep to the ground. They are better able to prevent flooding than sloping planted areas. Simple logic also dictates that terraces are able to resist being flooded. If the terraces are flooded, you can imagine how the lower areas fared.
It might be worthwhile to transform denuded hills, etc… as well any sloping areas where local communities are amenable into terraced lands capable of being farmed. We might be able to use wind pumps for irrigation. Staple food, Moringa, jatropha, coffee, cash crops, etc… maybe even fruit trees at the bottom can be considered. Priority can be given to nearby communities to farm such areas to let them have a stake in preserving the terraces.
A flood resistant rice variety came around last year. IR64-Sub1 is believed to tolerate even 2 weeks being under water. Two drought tolerant varieties were also introduced. One for upland farming and another for coastal areas.
We can be sufficient not only for ourselves but also for our livestock. Not only can we achieve food security but we can also attain surplus for trade and even for humanitarian aid to other countries.
-On July 2008, we made it on the international news on mangrove restoration. Unfortunately it was in a bad light. Two decades of planting hundreds of millions of Mangrove seedlings in 44 hectares have proven largely to be a failure. The solution put forth is better guidance of the planters, something that we cannot afford to neglect.
-Not all generics are made equal. Many differ in their effect as compared to the original drug. Bioequivalence is defined by the U.S. FDA as "the absence of a significant difference in the rate and extent to which the active ingredient or active moiety in pharmaceutical equivalents or pharmaceutical alternatives becomes available at the site of drug action when administered at the same molar dose under similar conditions in an appropriately designed study."
Bioequivalence of 2 drugs (eg. a generic and the original) can vary widely. A generic may have a bioequivalence of 90% compared to the original (innovator brand). Another generic on the other hand can have a bioequivalence of 60% as compared to the original drug.
Such disparity can have large implications on whether the generic drug itself will actually work.
The problem is that there is only a small number of medications that are required to undergo bioequivalence testing. For the rest, it will depend on whether the manufacturers would want their drug to be tested (the current cost of bioequivalence testing for just one drug is pegged at 1.5 million Pesos which obviously makes manufacturers apprehensive). Some generics can be priced so low against the original drug that the poor will readily purchase such medications without realizing if they are actually bioequivalent to the innovator brand. A policy that will push for greater bioequivalence testing is needed to ensure that generics are not only priced cheap but they are also able to do what they claim.
As one renowned physician from UST likes to say, “The most expensive drug is the one that does not work”.
-Daniel Nocera and his team were able to cleave Hydrogen from water using an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst. Total use of green energy just might be around the corner. The Philippines must be prepared to embrace the technology. The Philippines must expand its use of green energy. Aside from large scale power plants of solar, wind power, etc…, we should employ the use of micro scale devices like the Kyoto box cooker and similar items.
All disaster prone and/or poor communities must be provided the technology to utilize devices like the Kyoto box and materials like malunggay seeds to use during calamities or even for everyday use.
Small hydropower plants may even benefit from ASR use. Use of devices to pump out the same water may continuously recharge the reservoir area of small plants prolonging the use of hydropower plants. Simple wind pumps may be utilized. Dams must be de-silted to prolong their use.
With a combination of the issues above, we could lessen the disasters of floods, lessen the effects of droughts, prevent diseases, become sufficient enough in energy needs, attain food security and sufficiency, conserve our Dollars, maintain a Green Philippines, ……. , show the world that the Philippines is a responsible member of the community of nations, and even have enough leftover to pour on education, Universal healthcare, etc…
Any intervention/policy/ …. elucidated above can be coupled with others also to produce any desirable result. And all of the above does not by any mean complete any platform that must be undertaken by anyone who wishes well for the Philippines. Surely there must some other ideas out there waiting to be tapped.
<< Home