EDITORIAL - A method to addressing environment issues

In case the proponents of the total ban on plastic bags do not know it yet, many plastic bags are actually biodegradable. Some, like those used exclusively by a large retail chain, crumple into dust in a matter of a few weeks. This is not an empty claim but is actually verifiable. Try keeping one for some time and in no time at all it will all fall through your fingers like powder.

Instead of trying to impose a total ban on plastic bags, for no other reason than to find someone or something to blame for the still unsolved decades-old problem of flooding, perhaps the Cebu City government can require all plastic bags intended for commercial use to be made of the same biodegradable material being used already by this giant chain.

That way lazy and inefficient officials can be deprived of any excuse for their failure to solve the nagging flood problem. Plastic bags do not cause flooding. They may help clog up some waterways but it is not their fault that they found their way there. They are inanimate objects, remember? They have neither the legs to take them there nor the brains to know which way to go.

There are people we know, however, who have been given by God all that they need to serve their fellowmen and, at the same time, protect the environment as they go about doing so. Unfortunately, they have used their God-given talents and skills for something else. That is why our cities and villages continue to be flooded at the slightest rain.

And then they blame the poor plastic bag. Floods happen everywhere. They even happen in places that have no plastic bags. Clearly the solution lies somewhere else. If only those tasked to find a solution do not stop looking and try to just find the nearest alibi and pin the blame on it. Mandaue City, from whom the idea was copied, continues to experience flooding months after having gone plastic bag-free.

And why shouldn't it? And why shouldn't Cebu City as well, after it shall have jumped into the same lake? Because, ladies and gentlemen, it is not plastic bags that cause flooding. Floods happen because rains have become harder than usual. Floods happen because the open areas that used to absorb the rain and its runoff water have been replaced by a creeping concrete jungle.

Floods happen because there is no regular and mandatory upkeep, maintenance, and management of rivers, creeks, esteros, canals, and other waterways. Floods happen because there is no regular and mandatory upkeep, maintenance, and management of heavily-silted coastal seas to which these waterways empty. Oh, plastic bags.

Yes, floods happen because no one is arresting people who throw (here we go!) plastic bags, and everything else including the kitchen sink, everywhere.