9 classic Philippine Fails

Philippinefails Presents:

9 Classic Philippine Fails

1. Burning garbage

2. Using fire to cut the grass

3. Loud all night fiestas

4. Loud Church Bells at 5:30am

5. Karaoke. EVERYWHERE!

6. Traffic chaos

7. Litter everywhere

8. Disregard for safety

9. Mistreatment of dogs

Martial law and federalism won't fix this!

Smoky Piles 1

This is the inaugural post of a new series titled: "Smoky Piles."  

The air in the Philippines is not so fresh and breezy and tropical as one might think.  Everywhere you go you see people wearing face masks so they don't have to breathe in the nasty pollution. A big source of this pollution is burning piles of leaves and trash.  Imagine just waking up and throwing open the windows to let in the cool morning air.  All of a sudden you are choking on smoke because someone is burning leaves.

The nasty, acrid smell of smoke can happen at anytime of day. Filipinos are not discriminating about when they choose to burn their leaves and trash. Yes they burn trash here in the Philippines. But enough explanations.  

Here are a few pictures of smoky piles of leaves and trash in the Philippines.

The All-Day Smoky Pile

As ever some neighbours decided to burn their pile of leaves and twigs and brush.  Smokey and nasty.  Gross and polluted.  Blah blah blah.

But this pile was a little different.

Usually the fire dies down and out within an hour.  This pile went all day long.  The above photo was taken at 9 am.  The following photo was taken at 7 pm!

Still going strong and still stinking up the air after 10 hours.

If it had not been for the torrential downpour that night then surely the pile would still have been smoking long into the night and early hours of the morning. Only a very rude or very careless person would allow such a thing to happen.

Help! I Can't Breathe

It was 2 o'clock in the afternoon and I was just warming up to lift some weights when all of a sudden smoke hit my nostrils and breathing became difficult.  So I grabbed my camera and followed my nose until I found the source of the smoke.

My neighbour around the corner had been cutting the weeds across from his house and instead of tossing them over the brick wall and into an empty field he decided to stink up the air by burning them.  Smoke and ash in the air. And billowing right in my direction!

How nice of my neighbour to foul up the air. 

And how typically Filipino.  

There is not a that day goes by but every morning is ruined with the smell of smoke secretly pouring forth from somewhere. Heaven forbid you want to open the window and let in the cool fresh morning air. Burning leaves, burning coals, motorcycle exhaust. There is no fresh morning air here because fires and vehicle exhaust stink it up all day long.  

Burning the Sugarcane Fields

The final step of the sugarcane harvest is burning the fields.  After the crop is gone a mess of dried and dead stalks is left over.  Burning the harvested fields gets rid of the dried stalks making ploughing and sowing the field anew much easier.  

"Field burning removes all post-harvest trash left on the soil surface," said Windell Jackson, senior agronomist with the American Sugar Cane League. "Leaving the cut sugar cane leaves to compost on the ground prevents the sun from heating up the soil. Leaving mulch in the field keeps the soil damp and promotes fungus and other plant disease growth — diseases that damage and kill the sugar cane root."

http://www.houmatoday.com/news/20121220/sugar-cane-burning-is-necessary 

The burning is controlled.  Unlike homeowners burning trash and leaves, the sugarcane workers do not abandon the fire but guide it properly so that the fire does not spread to other fields.  However they cannot control the smoke which covers the entire countryside choking the life out of anyone who wants to breathe.  

 

Aside from the nasty pollution the burning is usually safe because it is supervised.  But even supervision cannot render this burning completely safe since the fire is licking right up on an electrical tower.

There is nothing safe about this at all.  Even if a fence was placed around the tower the potential for danger would not be gone.  

At least the cell tower is protected by a wall.

But still the potential for something extremely dangerous to occur has not totally disappeared.  That wall is covered in graffiti.  Let's take a close up and read what it says.

"If you think this is bad you should see what our government is up to"

As George Takei would say, "Oh my!"

Burning Trash

Filipinos love to burn leaves and trash. They just cannot wait for the garbage man (who comes twice a week!) to arrive so they pile it up big and small just to watch it burn.  Actually its mostly small.  And there's hardly any fire to speak of.  And no is watching.

Burn pile?  More like smoke pile. 

There's hardly anything there worth burning. Burn piles are usually huge and composed of leaves. Not in the Philippines. In the Philippines they will burn the tiny little pile they sweep from their doorstep just because they see no other way to get rid of it.

These burn piles, and some do start rather large but always die down into a smoke pile that will pollute the air for hours on end, are a nasty inevitability of living in the Philippines.  Sometimes mornings here are nice and lovely.  So peaceful and still. Especially after days of rain.  The day is beginning and you got a large cup of coffee and the windows and doors are open to let the fresh air clear out your house and then...out of nowhere...the acrid stench of smoke fills the air and the morning is ruined because someone decided to burn their little sweep pile. 

Open burning is just another area where Filipinos have no idea how to be good stewards of the environment or good neighbours. Good neighbours do not force others to breathe in the poisonous smoke generated by burning leaves and garbage.

They don't think to make a compost pile. They don't think to put it in a bag and let the garbage man take it. They don't think to collect all the leaves and toss them into a wooden area. They don't think at all. They only have one thing on their mind:

And they can't even do the burning right.  The goal is to incinerate the pile.  At some point it should become a mini-conflagration. When it dies down into a smoke pile it should be rekindled or put out. At the end there should be a pile of ashes.  What's left is usually a pile of leaves that is still relatively intact because nothing was ever burning. The smoke only gave the illusion of burning. 

Illusory and ineffective. How fitting a description for just about everything in this country.

And notice in the pics of the smoke pile how there is no one in attendance.  Not only do they start burning leaves right on the wall surrounding their house, which is about as foolish a thing as one can do, but they just walk away and que sera, sera. I have never once seen a burn pile being attended to. 

Notice also the contents of the burn pile. Not only are there leaves but there is also plastic! Filipinos won't think twice about burning plastic. Never mind all the toxins floating through the air and into your lungs. The air is already polluted enough from the unregulated motorcycles, cars, jeepneys, and trucks which regularly spew out thick black exhaust. What is needed is more airborne toxins and pollutants from burning plastic garbage.

They even burn plastic when they barbecue. The coals come in a plastic bag and they just light the whole thing on fire, bag and coals.  So when they go to barbecue their pork sticks and chicken intestines they now have toxic smoke infecting the meat. They aren't only breathing in the toxins but they are eating them as well.

Filipinos are literally poisoning themselves and their neighbours and they don't care.