by Ricky Jimenez
You can consider yourself a green consumer if you choose safe, healthy food, and drinks, manage stress, do physical activity, do not smoke and buy things that cause minimal environment impact.
Take the example of a Davao City-based consumer movement called CONSUMER ACTION FOR SUSTAINABLE AND HEALTHY LIFESTYLE or CASH-L. A member is both a green and empowered consumer. Lifestyle pursued is elegantly simple, sustainable and healthy. Meaning, no frills, light on resource use and health conscious.
CASH-L dreams to found communities of empowered consumers living a sustainable and healthy lifestyle. It is practiced by members in knowing what to put in or on the body. Empowered consumers leave as little personal waste stream and carbon footprint as possible on the planet. Aware of their role as stewards of creation, they learn to live simply so others (including plant and animal species) will simply live.
There are relevant consumer issues (not just high prices of commodities or taxes) which may be brought to light before concerned authorities at the proper time and place. To mention a few:
Vegetables and fruits grown in conventional farming and produced with the use of synthetic fertilizer and sprayed with pesticides. These chemicals leave behind residues that are health risks.
Only the Pesticide Analytical Laboratory (PAL) under the Department of Agriculture located in Mintal, Davao City can determine for certain if a farm produce is safe for public consumption. The problem is that the agency is helpless, given the “limited resources and manpower” provided it by the DA Manila office (it’s not the regional office, mind you). Its jurisdiction covers three regions of Mindanao. Its priorities (read this carefully) are export oriented fruits and vegetables. Export companies pay for the agency’s laboratory services.
The worsening air pollution from aging motor vehicles.
Commuters and pedestrians, including traffic enforces and sidewalk vendors exposed to such foul air on a regular basis, are candidates for chronic lung problems sooner or later. Have you heard of congestive obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)? It is part of modern lifestyle.
Unabated pollution of the city’s coastal waters. A scientific study by Dr. Rose Fundador, Ph.D., in the course of her post graduate studies leading to a degree in environmental science at the University of the Philippines made in the 1980s, concluded: “Based on findings…the coastal waters of Davao City are polluted… more evident in Bucana (densely populated) and along the northern coast (predominantly recreational).
These days, in the absence of a proper sewage treatment system, and with more urban coastal settlers, agricultural plantations, industries, etc, the coastal zone (where business is brisk catering to weekend beach-goers) is the hardest hit, health and environment-wise.
Unsegregated waste from everywhere, almost. There is need for a waste management education campaign, followed by strict enforcement. The result will be drastically reduced waste and less smelly garbage.
Imagine the good it will do to the 220-million peso sanitary landfill: its service life will be essentially extended. There will be less garbage trucks to contract, thereby saving millions of pesos in taxpayers money.
The need to phase out plastics, like common wrappers and handy bags. (Think something biodegradable, reusable and durable). Plastics take 50 years to decompose. Most often they clog up drainage systems.
Davao City prides itself as a laboratory for personal and social transformation. Today one sees less cigarette smokers in public places and hardly any pollution from exploding firecrackers during the yuletide season.
CASH-L is a local, but revolutionary, idea of empowering consumers. Encouraged to flourish by friends at the Department of Trade and Industry, CASH-L is spreading like a friendly virus in key cities and provinces all over the country where DTI operates.
Awakened to the fact that our faulty diet, sedentary life, materialistic outlook, etc. are affecting health and the environment, CASH-L members are learning to spend their money more responsibly. At the way the orientation for empowered consumerism is seeping into the way of life of more people, it will do well for the government and the business sector to take adaptation measures, just as the whole world is doing to mitigate the effects of global warming and climate change.
By the way, CASH-L thinking is about the same as the Lifestyle Of Health And Safety (LOHAS) popularized by celebrities in capital centers around the globe. LOHAS started in the 1990s,CASH-L in 2008, minus the celebrities.
The basis is the same: do what is right for health and the environment.
(For comments, email:rjrjrajimenez@gmail.com/. For CASH-L membership, contact CASH L Secretariat, 0906-502-4935 and 224-0511 local 421 Davao City, Department of Trade and Industry).
