GARBAGE as metaphor?
Tons and tons brought into our beautiful once-pristine islands by merchants without a conscience – what’s a clean conscience against dirty profits?
At no time in the history of smuggling has there been a more noxious tsunami of trash dumped on our shores by “rich” countries such as Canada, Australia, Korea, and Hong Kong, among the most recent. And what about the instruments of death by suicide in slow motion arriving in the form of cocaine and shabu not only on land but in the water?
Which is worse, mind-altering drugs or hazardous waste?
Their sources are foreign, but the consignees are our own people. Which is worse, to be insulted by other nations or betrayed by our own merchants who literally turn trash into cash and poison the very air, water and earth.
The most audacious of the importers of “basura” had the cheek to ask for permission to keep two of 66 containers (since 2013) “for sentimental reasons”! The mistake was not giving in to the ludicrous request, for if he had been allowed to do so, his neighbors would more than gladly have lynched him for disturbing the peace and odor of their surroundings.
Exporters know which countries to target for the weakness of their systems of surveillance and detection; they know which ports are more hospitable than others. “Tara na,” as they say at customs. The newly elected lawmakers have no time to lose in classifying such crimes as economic sabotage and largescale destruction of the environment.
If we were able to clean up Boracay in six months by punishing the guilty, we can throw the book at those who are willing to sell their country for a mountain of junk. Why not bury them alive in their own waste?!
In the age of garbage as a metaphor of our wanton disregard for Mother Nature and the environment, one sniff of hope emanates from Manila’s City Hall, whose new mayor has the experience to help us look at other people’s garbage as their problem and not ours to agonize over.