Earning a living is basic for survival. Convenience has been the main criteria for making a living in the past. Industrialization, however, changed everything. The economic growth and urbanization marked a new century of industrial revolution for a consumer world. Ensuring effective and sustainable management of the increased wastes is now a problem for the national and local governments (United Nations Environment Programme, 2009). 

 

            This problem, however, opened opportunities to the scrap trading business and has then flourished, became sophisticated and advanced to a small-scale industry. For instance, The Recyclables' Collection Event organized by the Earth day Network Philippines, the Philippine Business for the Environment, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), among other partners has collected Php 3,143,345.00 worth of recyclables (monetary equivalent) from garbage (Greenphils, 2008).

 

            Junkshops, the intermediary shops between sellers of scrap wastes and recycling companies, thrived in this by-product of industrialization. Today, garbage is money, not trash. This has been evident not only in the Philippines (Vincentian Missionaries, 1998 Gonzales, 2003) but also in other countries such as India (Luitel & Khanal, 2010). For as long as we continue to consume, the scrap trading business will continue to be profitable.

 

            I visited several junkshops here in the Philippines and some of which are shops passed down from parents to children. This continued operation is not only attributable to proper management but also to an unsaturated market. Junkshops are often interrelated and the scrap trading business has similar structure to that of retail industry. A small junkshop will buy scraps and sell it to a bigger junkshop and so on until the scraps reach a recycling company.

            The importance and contribution of the scrap trading industry and the informal and usually small recycling market is a success story of effective solid waste management. Thus, inclusion of junkshops in the modernization of our waste management system is essential.

 

 

References:

Gonzales, E. (2003). From Wastes to Assets: The Scavengers of Payatas. Proceedings of the International Conference on Natural Assets, 7, pp. 1-23.

 

Greenphils. (2008, June 3). Start a Junkshop. Garbage is Big Business. Retrieved http://greenphils.com/2008/06/03/start-a-junkshop-garbage-is-big-business/

 

Luitel, K. & Khanal, S. (2010). Study of Scrap Waste in Kathmandu Valley. Kathmandu University Journal of Science, Engineering and Technology, 6 (1), pp. 116-122.

 

United Nations Environment Programme. (2009). Developing Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan Training Manual, Volume 2 Assessment of Current Waste Management System and Gaps therein. Osaka/Shiga, Japan: International Environmental Technology Centre.

 

Vincentian Missionaries. (1998). The Payatas Environmental Development Programme: microenterprise promotion and Involvement in solid waste management in Quezon City. Environment and Urbanization, 10 (2), pp. 55-68.