Environmental watchdog group scores the non-enforcement of the national and city ban on littering.
9 January 2025, Quezon City. While awed by the unsurpassed outpouring of faith, the environmental watchdog group EcoWaste Coalition lamented the widespread littering that again blighted the Feast of the Black Nazarene.
As the Traslacion of the venerated image of the Black Nazarene is re-enacted, thousands upon thousands of devotees packed Rizal Park and flooded the processional route stretching 5.8 kilometers and culminating at the Minor Basilica and National Shrine of Jesus Nazareno in Quiapo, Manila.
“We are truly moved by our people’s unmatched devotion to Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, but we are deeply saddened by the unsightly trail of trash that sullied the surroundings and kept our waste workers and volunteers exhausted,” said Ochie Tolentino, Zero Waste Campaigner, EcoWaste Coalition.
“While the authorities imposed a strict ban on guns and liquor to ensure peace and order, we could not help but wonder why the ban on littering — an environmental offense explicitly prohibited in national and local laws — was evidently not enforced during the conduct of the Traslacion,” she observed.
“It is very disheartening to witness the unrestricted littering in a faith-oriented event amid the observance of the Zero Waste Month this January and as the 25th anniversary of Republic Act No. 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, on January 26 approaches,” she noted. “If it’s not ironic, what is it?”
At the Rizal Park, particularly at the Quirino Grandstand and parade ground where the Pahalik, Fiesta Misa Mayor and overnight vigil were held prior to the procession, some people had no qualms leaving their garbage at the sprawling grounds for others to pick up.
Government waste workers from Manila’s Department of Public Services, Metro Manila Development Authority and the National Parks Development Committee, and volunteers from the EcoWaste Coalition and its partners from Barangay 655 and 657, as well as Phileco personnel, took part in cleaning up the mess. Informal waste workers also lent a hand, retrieving recyclables left by the faithful on the fields, pavements, plant boxes, and overflowing trash bins.
As observed by the EcoWaste Coalition’s Basura Patrollers, the participants left a carpet of garbage at the country’s premier park — from improvised sleeping materials, food waste, urine-filled bottles, soiled diapers, and lots of disposable plastics such as plastic bottles, plastic “labo,” polystyrene food containers, cutlery, sachets, and even cigarette butts and vapes despite the park’s “no smoking, no vaping” policy.
Some streets in Quiapo were also found teeming with trash. The street corners, sidewalks, gutters, and lamp posts were strewn with mostly plastic garbage such as used plastic bottles and polystyrene food containers, the EcoWaste Coalition observed.
To some, littering might sound like an insignificant environmental lapse. In reality, it is not, the EcoWaste Coalition pointed out. As explained by the group, littering can contaminate the soil, air and water with solid and chemical pollutants that can affect living organisms in far-flung places like the rivers and the oceans. The adverse impacts of littering to the environment can persist for a long time as most of the things being littered are made of plastic, which will take years to break down, if at all, the group said.
Fearing a repeat of the unrestrained littering in the past, the group gathered last January 7 outside Quiapo Church to promote an ecological Traslacion this time around, stressing its “advocacy for reduced use and disposal of single-use plastics during the massive feast of the Black Nazarene is a concrete way of putting the bishops’ call for ecological action into practice.”
“As our nation is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss, we are challenged to integrate our duty to care for God’s creation in all aspects of our lives, including in the celebration of our faith,” the group said.
Despite the trashy situation, the EcoWaste Coalition remained optimistic that an ecological Traslacion, one that fuses faith with action for the environment, will become a reality before long. “Kalakip ng debosyon ang malinis na Traslacion,” the group reiterated. (Close to devotion is the clean Traslacion)
