Coca-Cola World Without Waste Communities Project - Bacolod
Winner: 2020 Philippine Quill Award for Communication Management (Community Relations)
Challenge
RA 9003, a law mandating a systemic ecological waste management program in the country, calls for Local Government Units (LGUs) to ensure proper waste disposal, segregation, and recycling at the barangay level. Unfortunately, most barangays in the country could not comply due to the lack of technical knowledge and financial resources.
Segregating at source and proper waste disposal could reduce the wastes brought to the landfill by 60%. This is because food wastes are turned into compost, plastics and paper are recycled into new materials, and residual and toxic wastes are properly disposed of without becoming pollutants. Yet, segregated collection schemes as mandated by law are not observed in public spaces, and residents are not segregating at source.
Strongly committed to becoming an integral part of the communities they operate in, CCBPI took the opportunity to create a more sustainable zero-waste environment and to build a world without waste by helping barangays change their approach to SWM.
Solution
Through a multi-sectoral and grassroots approach, the WWW team aimed to:
- gain stakeholder support for the project
- provide technical and financial support to Mansilingan to empower the barangay to implement their own SWM Plan; and
- implement a sustainable, WWW-based SWM Plan in Mansilingan, a model that CCBPI can scale nationwide.
Throughout the project, the WWW team led by CCBPI and Evident successfully worked hand in hand with the residents, youth groups, and the LGU towards the unified goal of creating a more sustainable zero-waste community for the barangay.
The WWW Communities Project – Bacolod began with a series of meetings with the Bacolod City LGU and City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) from May to June 2019. This was followed by field scans and assessment of its SWM systems. The team discovered that Bacolod City’s 10-Year SWM Plan mainly utilizes a Clean Up Contract which gives a hauling company the task of collecting the entire city’s waste using garbage hauling trucks.
With the local government’s looming requirement for Barangay Mansilingan, Bacolod, to have its own SWM Plan, Coca Cola and Evident encouraged households to segregate at source to create a zero-waste community.
The stakeholders’ inputs were organized through the 4Es (Education, Engineering, Enforcement, and Economics) Framework that reinforced a holistic approach where all stakeholders were given the opportunity to provide their inputs, volunteer support, and identify their responsibilities.
Aside from stakeholder involvement are succeeding interventions that covered all important aspects of the plan: information dissemination and training (Education), infrastructure building (Engineering), implementation and monitoring (Enforcement), and resource management (Economics).
Results
WWW successfully met its objectives based on notable project milestones and the results of each phase — the World Without Waste intervention achieved the following feats with the community:
- A Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was signed by CCBPI’s Public and Corporate Affairs Director, Atty. Juan Lorenzo Tañada and Bacolod City Mayor Evelio “Bing” Leonardia, to seal the commitment between the company and the LGU.
- Maintained 100% involvement of stakeholders from planning, infrastructure building, to completion of a Solid Waste Management Plan, demonstrating strong community engagement and support.
- A resolution was signed by Mansilingan LGU allocating 150 square meters of land in front of the Mansilingan Basketball Gym beside the Barangay Hall for the use of WWW MRF.
- WWW MRF and two Eco-centers were successfully installed by Phase VI of the project.
- With an initial target of 60, a total of 94 volunteers participated in the two-day information and education campaign (IEC), exceeding our target by 57%. WWW working team and volunteers distributed and explained the IEC Materials to a total of 795 households within the pilot puroks.
Through our combined efforts, we established a sustainable SWM program for Barangay Mansilingan via a community-led, participative process among all stakeholders. We look forward to continuing the program among the neighboring barangays in Bacolod.
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