ONE placard read: “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle”. Another one said: “Save water, save the trees.”

Dressed in orange and green, one group in last weekend’s Panagbenga, or Baguio’s annual Flower Festival, “accessorized” their costumes with these messages.

Panagbenga is the best and the worst time to be in Baguio–the city already overcrowded as it is with college students from all over, call centers that lure job-seekers from nearby provinces (which gave rise to nightspots like Nevada Square) and yes, Korean tourists.

During the parade, I chatted with Jen Gapasin of the Green City Baguio Coalition, who said her group took advantage of the festival in getting their message across–about their plea to make Baguio “green” again.

Many years ago, a former mentor (from a previous job) once told me about this place called Sagada that he described this way: it was how Baguio looked like before it became a bustling city.

And so I went to Sagada and saw how it pristine and green it was then–though it became less and less so during succeeding visits after seeing many parked SUVs.

So what now Baguio? I have fond childhood memories of spending summer vacations there with cousins who lived along Loakan Airport.

After spending covering the parade tucked inside a sea of people, I was dying to get out of the downtown area. So I took my family to John Hay, the one place I could think of then to get away from the crowd.

But as I was driving on Loakan Road, I noticed that there are less pine trees now and that they looked a lot “green” before. How about being more specific and come up with a slogan like: “Save the pine trees?”