Imprisoned Senator, Antonio Trillanes IV, filed recently a bill in the Philippine Senate to amend the Clean Air Act so that waste incinerators could be exempted from its coverage.
RA 8749 prohibits the use of obsolete incinerators as it is identified as one of the primary sources of high carbon emissions. As a result, local governments have shifted to landfills and open dumpsites as modes of waste disposal. However, landfills and dumpsites have created more environmental problems such as harmful methane emissions; seepage of toxic liquids to our underground water sources; and lack of acceptable disposal sites.
WTE technology would solve two major issues our society is facing today: energy shortage and garbage disposal. It provides for the safe disposal of waste without harmful emissions to the atmosphere, while transforming our huge volumes of garbage into much-needed energy
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Arguments against the use of waste incinerators point out that the use of waste incinerators encourage people to stop recycling and reducing waste altogether because you think that you can burn all forms of waste in the atmosphere.
Property values also seem to drop around the area that a waste incinerator is built. Plus there is the hot topic still up for debate in the medical communities as to whether burned incinerator particles from newer and cleaner incinerators are really that safe for human intake.
Senator Trillanes was an officer in the Philippine Navy before staging a coup along with some other junior officers in the business district of Makati in the Philippines in 2003. Calling themselves as the Magdalo group, they were disgruntled with the rampant corruption in the Philippine Armed Forces.
The plot failed and the group surrendered. As the leader of the coup he was not granted pardon as the other members of his group were. He ran for Senator in the last election under the banner of the opposition and a platform of anti-corruption. Because of this he easily won a seat on the Senate without ever having had the benefit to step out of his cell to campaign.
During the recent reorganization at the Senate, where Senate Leader Manny Villar was ousted, Sen. Trillanes opted to be an independent and not be part of either the majority of minority groups.
Category: Environment, Clean Air
