sketch

• Sun.Star Davao
• Ericson P. Europa
• 15 Oct 2019

The world’s ocean plas­tic prob­lem is quite alarm­ing. Around 4 to 12 mil­lion tons of plas­tic are be­ing dumped into the sea ev­ery year. The World­wide Fund for Na­ture (WWF) says there are 150 mil­lion tons of plas­tic de­bris in oceans world­wide and that num­ber is ex­pected to dou­ble in the next 10 years.

Over time, the plas­tics break down into small frag­ments, trans­form­ing the ocean wa­ter into a “big soup” made up of mi­croplas­tics. These tiny par­ti­cles en­ter the marine food chain after plank­ton and small an­i­mals mis­take them as food. Even­tu­ally, these toxic sub­stances end up in our bod­ies since man sits at the top of the food chain. More­over, we of­ten hear sto­ries and news of whales and sea tur­tles die due to plas­tic in­ges­tion or en­tan­gle­ment in plas­tic de­bris.

Ac­cord­ing to its 2015 re­port, the in­ter­na­tional en­vi­ron­men­tal group, Ocean Con­ser­vancy ranked the Philip­pines as the third largest source of ocean plas­tic pol­lu­tion, be­hind China and In­done­sia, dis­card­ing 5.1 mil­lion met­ric tons of plas­tic per year. Since then, gov­ern­ment and pri­vate agen­cies had been en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to ini­ti­ate cleanup drives in their lo­cal­i­ties.

The United Ar­chi­tects of the Philip­pines – Davao Chap­ter has heeded this call. The or­ga­ni­za­tion, headed by its Chap­ter Pres­i­dent, Gil­bert Peter For­tich, con­ducted an ocean cleanup ac­tiv­ity in the Davao Gulf on Oc­to­ber 6, 2019, in co­op­er­a­tion with Pro Dive Davao and Davies Paints.

More than thirty vol­un­teers, con­sist­ing of ar­chi­tects and mem­bers of the United Ar­chi­tects of the Philip­pines Stu­dent Aux­il­iary (UAPSA) chap­ters of Ate­neo de Davao Univer­sity, Malayan Col­leges Min­danao, Univer­sity of Min­danao, and Univer­sity of the Philip­pines Min­danao, par­tic­i­pated in the event.

On board a mo­tor banca, the par­tic­i­pants sailed from Sta. Ana Wharf early morn­ing and stopped about 6 nau­ti­cal miles from shore, where they started the cleanup drive un­der the guid­ance of Pro Dive Davao’s Shawn Kennedy. After comb­ing an area of half kilo­me­ter of wa­ter sur­face, the vol­un­teers were able to re­cover ten sacks of float­ing garbage con­sist­ing of plas­tic wrap­pers, drink­ing straws, and non-biodegrad­able pack­ag­ing.

The cleanup ini­tia­tive, spear­headed by Ar­chi­tects Ger­ard Anasco, Em­manuel Ed­san Labu­tap and Geo Mo­ra­dos, was part of the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­vo­cacy in cel­e­bra­tion of World Ar­chi­tec­ture Day.