A serious question for those managing our waste management systems: do our garbage pickers have the right (or let’s say the privilege) to refuse to load certain types of waste material?
As I’ve said here in my column space last week, we’re now in the process of moving back to our house after nearly two months of renovation.
One thing I really don’t like about moving back is the amount of trash we had to deal with: leftover construction materials, junk that we had packed away (and were planning to dispose as we begin to unpack and rearrange our things), not to mention parts of our house that the workers demolished when they started renovating it.
The problem? The garbage pickers who regularly go by our subdivision have refused to take some of the trash we have, even though we had painstakingly made sure that we pack them inside sacks or garbage bags.
When we tried to have them haul our trash, we were told that we had to pay them to haul the mountain of junk that had accumulated at the side of our house.
The workers had been rushing to fix the side of our house, and rather than subject ourselves to an endless wait that would delay the renovation process, long story short, we had to pay the garbage collectors.
Actually, this trend is nothing new in our subdivision in San Pedro City – even before we had our house renovated, we had noticed that there were certain types of garbage that the collectors wouldn’t even touch even though they follow segregation laws.
According to our neighbors, these collectors claim that there was a lack of space to dispose of the trash (a plausible excuse, given that San Pedro City has had issues regarding its solid waste management in the past).
But to me, that’s no excuse at all for our garbage collectors to be picky about the trash they collect from our homes. It’s part of their jobs, right?
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Speaking of trashy behavior, I hate it that some celebrities and die-hard fans are now claiming that Alex Gonzaga, who was caught in a viral video smearing cake into a waiter at her birthday, was the victim of a “woke” and “dilawan” online mob. (For God’s sake, please, can’t we banish that word already from existence?)
Seriously, “woke” has been misused and co-opted by fools who just want an excuse (and justification) for trashy behavior.
Nowadays, some so-called “celebrities” would rather play the victim card and accuse the public of ganging up on them rather than accepting and taking the responsibility for their errors.
And regardless of whether that waiter was a close friend of the Gonzagas (or so they say), let’s remember this: even with close friends, there should be boundaries. Not all friends would like to be humiliated in public like that.
To me, this issue should not be an issue of political affiliations at all. It should be an issue of basic human decency and how we should treat other people, whether they are above or below our social status.
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Let me close this week’s column with a Biblical quote:
"Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death, is one who deceives their neighbor and says, 'I was only joking!'" (Proverbs 26:18-19, New International Version)