Environment

Living on garbage in the Philippines

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Mary Lee's shanty home is made of rusted box spring mattresses (Photo: Simone Orendain)

Trash is cash for many living in the Quezon City dumpsite near Manila in the Philippines but it’s also perilous. Ten years ago a pile of rain soaked garbage crashed down, burying nearly 300 squatters. That set off a move to convert the site into a controlled waste operation but the program is due to end by December – and the trash continues to grow. Reporter Simone Orendain visited the dumpsite. (Photo: Simone Orendain) Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN: Ten years ago, a garbage dump in the Philippines was the scene of a tragedy. A towering pile of trash collapsed, burying some 300 people who lived and scavenged at the dump. The collapse prompted authorities to intervene to make the 74-acre Payatas dumpsite safe. But time is now running out for the site and its residents, as Simone Orendain reports.

SIMONE ORENDAIN:  As you approach the Payatas dumpsite, the road is lined with junkshops and shanty homes piled high with the precious commodity of trash. Behind them looms a massive gray mountain of garbage. But as you get close, that gray pile also has a lot of green and it barely smells.

JAMEEL JAYMALIN:  So this is the sample of this vetiver grass.

ORENDAIN: Retired Colonel Jameel Jaymalin stands on an incline planted with trees and flowers. He’s especially excited by the grass. Vetiver grass has seven-foot roots that grab onto the garbage, crushed rock and soil beneath, stopping erosion and absorbing odors.

JAYMALIN: And this is very effective. We’ve been using this, planting this for the last six, seven years and no trash slide has been noticed here.

ORENDAIN: Jaymalin heads the operation that revamped this site. The dump was once deadly towers of trash. It’s now a series of gently sloping hills. Before the disastrous slide that prompted the landscaping, people came and went on their own, looking for plastics, aluminum and other recyclables to sell. Entire families including small children converged on the trash heaps. Now the government facilitates the scavenging in two shifts. About 1,200 people come in during the day and some 700 at night. Children aren’t allowed. This picture of orderly waste management is only temporary. With some 1,200 metric tons of garbage dumped daily, it won’t be long before this place is deadly again. But Jaymalin says the dump will soon close so the scavengers and nearby squatters won’t be in any danger.

JAYMALIN: They should prepare and look for alternative jobs because the garbage will not be here forever. In fact we are closing this, we are planning to close this by December, the end of the year. So we are preparing them, in fact.

ORENDAIN: Jaymalin says 75 people have so far completed a government-sponsored training program for jobs such as mechanics, drivers and electronics repair. Not a lot, compared to the thousands of families who live off of picking, and processing, the trash. About a mile away, Mary Lee sorts through huge sacks of used plastics. Her shanty home is made of rusted box spring mattresses. The 46-year-old remembers when the government temporarily closed the dumpsite after the tragedy in 2000.

SPEAKING TAGALOG

ORENDAIN: Lee says, “When the dump was gone, of course people went hungry. You started to see theft. There were very angry people who started hurting and killing each other because there was no way to earn.” Lee predicts the same thing will happen if the dump closes for good. She says her work helped put her daughter through high school, which is out of reach for most of this country’s poor. Garbage pickers can earn up to five dollars a day. That’s around half the daily minimum wage and just about enough to buy a day’s supply of rice for a family. After speaking with people who live off garbage, few seemed to have much faith in the government’s job training plan and they don’t believe the government will actually close the dumpsite. Colonel Jameel Jaymalin says the Payatas dumpsite will definitely close this year and soon after will be transformed into a park. And he says the scavengers who rely on the trash will have some time to adjust. A new 10-acre landfill will open next to the old dump, which he says will take two to three years to fill. For the World, I’m Simone Orendain in Manila.

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