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Burgos wind farm joins fight against plastic pollution

By Leilanie Adriano

October 18, 2019, 4:33 pm

<p><strong>BEATING PLASTIC POLLUTION.</strong> Students of the Burgos Agro Industrial School in Burgos, Ilocos Norte make ecobricks during their pastime instead of playing with gadgets or roaming around town. The Burgos windfarm, under the corporate social responsibility arm of Energy Development Corporation, hosted a workshop on making ecobricks to minimize plastic wastes in the community on Friday (Oct. 18, 2019). <em>(Photo courtesy of EDC)</em></p>

BEATING PLASTIC POLLUTION. Students of the Burgos Agro Industrial School in Burgos, Ilocos Norte make ecobricks during their pastime instead of playing with gadgets or roaming around town. The Burgos windfarm, under the corporate social responsibility arm of Energy Development Corporation, hosted a workshop on making ecobricks to minimize plastic wastes in the community on Friday (Oct. 18, 2019). (Photo courtesy of EDC)

LAOAG CITY—The Energy Development Corporation, home to the largest wind power farm in Southeast Asia has joined groups of earth warriors in reducing single-use plastic materials.

Starting with their host communities particularly students of the Burgos Agro Industrial School, around 200 students here are being trained how to make ecobricks, a plastic bottle stuffed with clean plastic wrappers which can be used as a building block.

Deborah Melchor, head of the Corporate Social Responsibility program of the EDC, said Friday that a workshop on ecobrick-making was introduced to the students and teachers to manage plastic wastes in the community.

“This was a follow up of the first ecobrick workshop we introduced last February 2019 with invited trainers from the Global Ecobrick Alliance,” said Melchor. “This resulted to the launching of the Basura Exchange Store Tiangge (BEST), an initiative by the Barangay Poblacion, Burgos Central Elementary School and the Burgos wind farm”.

Study shows Filipinos throw out 163 million sachets and 93 million pieces of plastic bags every day.

These unmanaged plastic wastes almost always find its way to the ocean. Roughly around 5 trillion pieces of plastics are already floating in the ocean.

Alarmed with this scenario, Melchor said the Burgos wind farm is focusing its effort in combating plastic pollution through ecobrick making, a cost-efficient and innovative way of tackling plastic wastes and prevent it from harming the environment.

Ecobricks can be used as material in building benches, fences, walkways, tables and chairs and even buildings. To date, the Burgos wind farm was able to collect 655 pieces of ecobricks equivalent to 475.719 kilograms of plastic wastes. These will be used as construction materials for the EDC’s planned projects for school.

Meanwhile, EBWPC hopes to reach out to more schools to educate more learners about the dangers of plastic pollution and how each one can contribute to manage it. (PNA)


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