Caloocan Barangay Gears Up for Safe E-Waste Management
Officials of the country’s largest barangay, Bagong
Silang in Caloocan City, met with purok
leaders to build community awareness and support for a pioneering e-waste
facility toward the safe management of discarded electronics.
Last week, on July 24 and 25, over 100 community leaders
of Barangay 176 assembled at the multi-purpose hall to get themselves informed
about the government-led “Safe PCB and E-Waste Management Project” that seeks,
among other goals, the environmentally-sound
management of toxic polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in cathode ray tube
(CRT) television sets.
The establishment of the e-waste facility is an integral
part of the project funded by the Global Environment Facility with the United
Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) as the project implementing
agency and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental
Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) as the lead executing agency.
Led by Chairman Joel S. Bacolod, Barangay Bagong Silang
has agreed to host the e-waste facility to promote and protect the health of
residents, numbering around 315,000, from unsafe recycling and disposal
practices of discarded electronics.
At the forum, Dante Lista, Chief of Barangay 176
Environmental Management and Protection Office, explained that the e-waste
facility to be set up will provide concrete benefits for the people of Bagong
Silang.
“This project will have at least triple benefits for our
barangay. First is the health benefit,
particularly for e-waste dismantlers, due to reduced occupational exposure to
hazardous substances in e-waste. Second
is the environmental benefit resulting
from the safe-management of e-waste. And
third is the livelihood benefit for the informal recyclers who will be
subsequently trained and employed,” he said.
Staff of the EcoWaste Coalition, an environmental health
organization, spoke at the forum about the hazards of improper e-waste
handling, recycling and disposal, as well as the need for improved e-waste
management practices to protect workers’ health and the environment.
Trained personnel coming from the ranks of Caloocan-based
e-waste workers will help in managing the collected TVs before these are
transferred for proper dismantling and recycling at a plant in Calamba, Laguna.
Organized e-waste
recyclers in the city had earlier expressed their hope for a decent and safe
recycling-based livelihood with the operation of the said facility in Bagong
Silang.
According to the report “A New Circular Vision for
Electronics: Time for a Global Reboot," “less than 20 percent of e-waste
is formally recycled, with 80 percent either ending up in landfill or being
informally recycled – much of it by hand in developing countries, exposing
workers to hazardous and carcinogenic substances such as mercury, lead and
cadmium.”
Released in January 2019, the report published by the
Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE) and the UN E-Waste
Coalition, which includes UNIDO, said that “e-waste can be toxic, is not
biodegradable and accumulates in the environment, in the soil, air, water and
living things.”
The report proposes collaborative efforts involving
various sectors “to create a circular economy for electronics where waste is
designed out, the environmental impact is reduced, and decent work is created
for millions.”
-end-
Reference:
https://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/un-world-economic-forum-and-partners-come-together-to-address-e-waste-challenges.html#info
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