By Dhel Nazario The Taguig City Government has vowed to reduce the city's solid waste by 80 percent in three years, the local chief executive announced. (Photo from Taguig PIO) This green initiative will contribute to the overall health and well-being in the city, addressing flood problems and other environmental concerns. It will also create employment opportunities for many Taguigeños such as waste collectors, monitoring staff, and MRF caretakers. All these will yield higher productivity and greater economic development. To further strengthen this, the city government also announced to establish a Sustainable Livelihood Office that will help look for sustainable alternatives, in the event attended by city environment committee heads, barangay and SK chairs and cluster heads. Furthermore, all succeeding infrastructure projects of the city will also have a materials recovery facility. The waste collected and brought at MRFs goes toward composting for plants, repurposing for community gardens, and landfill. A technical working group that will survey all 28 barangays for the appropriate land for the facilities shall be created for this. Taguig will also join global efforts to phase out single-use plastics. Citizens are encouraged to use canvas bags or ecobags as an alternative to plastic bags when shopping for sundries such as meat, fruits, and vegetables. Taguig City Mayor Lino Cayetano encouraged each barangay captain to take the lead in their communities for this initiative with the city committing to provide training and support. "The key for this is information dissemination. Focusing on segregating-at-source, every household, school, business in Taguig will be taught how to properly manage their trash," Mayor Cayetano said.