Police and volunteers have started removing campaign posters all over Metro Manila, even though it is the candidates who should be cleaning up their mess.
“Whether or not the candidates won the Monday’s elections, they should all serve as role models in cleaning up the campaign materials which came from them in the first place,” said Metro Manila police chief Guillermo Eleazar.
A spokesperson for the Ecowaste Coalition agreed and urged candidates to sort the materials and upcycle them when possible.
Aileen Lucero, a spokesperson, said upcycling, or the creative reuse of discards, is a practical way of saving resources from being burned or sent to the dumps and landfills for disposal.
So far, police and volunteers have removed 654,859 posters that were outside the common poster areas.
“Let us do away with the bad practice in the past of just leaving behind the campaign materials,” Eleazar said.
He ordered his men to coordinate with the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority to conduct one final “Baklas” operation to rid the metropolis of posters and other campaign materials.
The MMDA on Wednesday said Manila, Paranaque and Quezon City produced the greatest volume of campaign materials.
Most of the 23.42 tons of campaign posters and other election-related materials it removed and collected after the May 13 midterm elections came from various areas of the three cities.
MMDA chairman Danilo Lim said the cleanup in major roads would take a week. Public schools, which were used as election precincts, would also be spruced up for school opening early next month.
Francis Martinez, head of the MMDA Metro Parkway Clearing Group, said they collected a total of 168.84 tons of election-related trash since the campaign began.
Tarpaulins would be recycled into bags, placemats and other useful items, he said.
Martinez said this year’s collections were lower than the 206 tons of garbage collected in 2016.
