Philippines is one of the leading country that has improper garbage disposal. One example of this is Metro Manila which is now home to more than 12 million people. As with many other megacities in Asia, waste collection and disposal are a major environmental issue. “Currently about 35,000 tons of municipal solid waste are generated by the Philippines daily, and more than 8,600 tons per day in Metro Manila alone. A sizable proportion of the refuse is openly burned, further worsening the quality of the city’s already heavily polluted air,” said Aldrin B. Plaza, urban development officer for the sustainable development and climate change department at the Asian Development Bank. Our petition aims to lessen waste production in the Philippines and start proper management of waste and proper disposal. 

Plaza pointed out that there had been efforts to address this challenge through the 2000 Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, which was considered a landmark legislation on environmental management. The said law was aimed at systematically organizing and sustainably managing the collection and disposal of municipal solid waste in the country.

Plaza noted that the law mandated the establishment of municipal solid waste collection systems anchored on the 3R formula—Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. It also provided specific deadlines for closing unsanitary open dumpsites and supported properly engineered sanitary landfills as the only sustainable means of final garbage disposal.

Seventeen years later however, the law’s objectives are yet to be achieved. According to Plaza, cities are still dumping waste on open dumpsites. In 2010, when all the open dumpsites should have been closed as mandated by the law, 790 were still operating.

 Major Restraints

Plaza identified three major obstacles that have contributed to this failure: the “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) attitude; financing and governance; and the ban on incineration, which has eliminated a viable alternative to land filling.

He said that while social perception and assessment exercises were used to educate communities about the difference between materials recovery facilities, sanitary landfills and open dumpsites, the common notion of what a dumpsite looks like is embedded in people’s minds.

A second obstacle, according to Plaza, is that the investment costs and management burden of a comprehensive municipal solid waste management system are proving to be too burdensome for many cities. For one, investing in such systems is costly for a single local government unit to shoulder, while some LGUs lack the technical competency.

Meanwhile, an existing law—the 1999 Clean Air Act—prohibited incineration for municipal waste disposal. The 2000 law, it can be recalled, solely prescribed engineered sanitary landfills as the acceptable method of final waste disposal. He added that landfills without methane capture are much worse because the escaping methane is 34 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. Apparently, the Philippines is reportedly the only country in the world that bans incineration for the disposal of wastes. Other countries such as The Netherlands and Singapore have incinerators to process wastes.

“Seventeen years after the passage of the Ecological Solid Waste Management, MSW collection and disposal is still a major problem. The NIMBY attitude, weak LGU capacities, and lack of alternatives to landfilling have aggravated the situation,” Plaza said. “The private sector does have the technical competence and available solutions to solve the problem. Perhaps it’s time for private companies—especially energy and recycling businesses—to step in,” he concluded.

Some of the effects of improper waste disposal are soil, water and air pollution. Here in the Philippines improper waste disposal is one of the big problems we are facing. Due to this dilemma one of the main rivers of the Philippines, Pasig River was once praised for its beauty but due to the urban growth, household and industrial waste The Pasig River dumps up to 63,700 tons of plastic—the equivalent weight of over 10,600 elephants to the ocean each year. That is just one of the many problems and effects that inappropriate waste disposal causes our environment here in the Philippines. 

Honestly, we can't eradicate the wastes totally but we still have a chance to lessen and reduce our waste problem. It can be a huge impact on our surroundings and environment and lessen the progression of global warming and its negative effects on our home. We just need to help each other hand in hand for the betterment of the future of our environment.

 

Sources:

https://blogs.adb.org/blog/ditch-nimby-fix-philippines-municipal-solid-waste-problem​ 

https://sciencing.com/info-8788724-causes-pasig-river-pollution.html​

http://business.inquirer.net/238997/addressing-waste-management-woes-cities