This New Year is the perfect time to turn the trash lying around your home into cash!
The holiday season is the busiest time of the year for Filipinos. It is also a period wherein trash can accumulate easily as a result of various activities linked to the season’s celebrations.
Knowing this, SM is encouraging Filipinos to observe responsible solid waste management as they welcome 2021 via the Trash-to-Cash recycling program.
SM City Puerto Princesa calls for nearby communities to bring in their plastic bottles, scrap paper, cardboard, and cookware at the recycling market along Lacao Street, Bgy. San Miguel happening this January 8-9 from 10 AM to 2 PM.
Trash-to-Cash is SM’s long-running environmental initiative aimed at educating the community to recycle, dispose of their trash properly, and earn in the process. Launched in 2007, the program is part of the company’s efforts in compliance with Republic Act No. 9003, also known as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Program.
SM’s recycling market happens every first Friday and Saturday of the month from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Participants in the program can find the market in designated areas across all SM Supermalls in the country, as well as in five SMDC Residences – Jazz, Light, Mezza, M Place, and Sun.
Under the program, SM also involves its partner tenants. Part of this is the buyout of their used cooking oil, which also complies with government policies on the responsible disposal of hazardous waste, as well as encouraging them to dispose of their unusable or broken lightbulbs through the program, to name a few.
Since its launch, Trash-to-Cash has enabled the proper disposal of millions of tonnes of solid waste. In 2019 alone, the program diverted a total of 9,910,004 kg. of paper, plastic, glass, metal, and other types of waste material from landfills. An estimated 83,418,598 kgs of waste have also been turned over in the program’s 13-year run.
A majority of the items transacted at the market are paper products. Data from 2015 to 2019 show that the paper recycled through the company’s solid waste management efforts, including Trash-to-Cash, has saved 410,691 seven-year-old trees. About 2,514,926 kgs of paper have been recycled since its launch.