WHAT STARTED as a plan to sort the Loyola Schools (LS)’ garbage is now one of South East Asia’s best environmental projects.
A proposal entitled “Waste to resource conversion at the Loyola Schools, Ateneo de Manila University,” which focuses on the reduction of waste in the LS, won in the ASEAN DuPont Green Vision Case Challenge, a competition that seeks to find the best environmental projects in South East Asia.
Herwin Jerome Unidad (V BS Ps MSE), David So (V BS Ps MSE), and Vivienne Erica Zerrudo (IV BS ES), who drafted the proposal, bested other teams from the University of the Philippines and the De La Salle University, in the competition held July 2 at the DuPont Far East Office in Makati.
The team presented their winning proposal at the ASEAN Green Vision Sustainability Forum at the Singapore Management University last July 16.
Together with their coach, Environmental Science Instructor Abigail Favis, the team are also members of the Ateneo Environmental Management Coalition (AEMC), which aims to make the LS more environmentally-friendly.
Seeing green
“The plan is in place already, and they thought it was a good idea to enter it in a contest,” said Favis. “So we sent the proposal for the waste-resource conversion program…and they won!”
Last January, Unidad and So conducted a waste audit, or a close inspection of the garbage of the LS, as part of a project. From the audit, the students found that there was a lot of biodegradable waste which could be reduced, and a lot of recyclables that could be recovered.
“If you look at the total solid waste of the Loyola Schools, more than half is biodegradable, and a quarter at least is recoverable,” said Favis.
Unidad and So submitted their findings to Lourdes Sumpaico, coordinator for special projects and AEMC head. Sumpaico forwarded the findings to Vice President Ma. Assunta Cuyegkeng, Ph. D, who, coincidentally, was planning of putting an environmental system in place.
“So they absorbed David and Jerome, and then we all became part of planning for the activity for this year,” said Favis.
Rotating drums
Unidad said that they proposed to build two kinds of facilities to support the three kinds of waste in the LS.
Compostable waste, such as dried leaves and left-over food, is biodegradable. “Recoverables, these are non-biodegradable stuff that you can still recover and recycle, to put it back into the consumption chain like your plastic,” Unidad said.
The team’s business plan aimed to support the compostable and recoverable waste, since the third kind, residuals, are dead-end waste products.
The team first proposed a composting facility in the form of a rotating drum. “It has prongs inside to [aerate] the biodegradable material,” said So.
To support recoverable waste, the team also proposed a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). “The MRF is basically a cage where they store metals, plastics [before being sold to recyclers].”
School-wide effort
Favis said she heard about the competition from the students only two days before the deadline of the proposal.
“We spent the whole Thursday and Thursday night [working on the proposal],” she said. “We almost slept over here just trying to finish the proposal and because the deadline was on Friday [June 27].”
Unidad said the project has to be supported by a detailed proposal that is sustainable from the business perspective. “It’s not just a green vision… simultaneously, you want to minimize environment impact and maximize economic benefits,” Unidad said.
Unlike their competitors, the team’s project stood out because of the participation of the administration, faculty, and students from the LS, said Unidad.
“If the administration is not willing to fund this project, to support it, then none of the changes would have happened.”
With reports from Rachelle D. Gutierrez
