Focus on reduce, reuse, recycle methods - expert

MANILA, Philippines - To properly manage municipal waste, an expert on waste disposal said the country should focus on “reduce, reuse and recycle” methods instead of investing in disposal technologies such as open dumps and engineered landfills.

US-based Neil Tangri, a waste and climate campaigner of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), said investments in the waste sector should not go toward costly high-tech end-of-pipe technologies but toward zero waste that will dramatically reduce the amount of trash sent for disposal.

“Investments in waste reduction, source separation, extended producer responsibility, informal recycling sector and other initiatives will lead to a progressive reduction on the volume and toxicity of waste sent for disposal,” he said in a forum in Quezon City.

Tangri added: “By now, there is general agreement around the world on the best way to manage municipal waste. This is codified in the waste hierarchy and the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle,’ indicating a preferential order for handling waste: source reduction is the highest priority, followed by finding the ‘highest and best use’ for each discard.”

He drew attention to the important role that the informal recycling sector plays in developing countries like the Philippines.

Tangri said, “Waste pickers are the de facto recycling system in much of the world; if not for their work, the waste problem would be much worse than it already is. But they can do much more if they are given investment, opportunities, and above all, respect.”

To lower the amount of waste going to dumps, reduce greenhouse gas and toxic air emissions and provide additional employment, local authorities should seek cooperative arrangements with waste pickers to implement source separation and treatment of organics, Tangri suggested.

He explained that the apparent fixation on disposal technologies are “in part, because these are the most profitable aspects of waste management, and in part, because so many open dumps and garbage mountains persist around the world, with their attendant health and environmental hazards.”

“Almost anything appears to be an improvement over open dumps and open burning, but we should not fall prey to ‘second worst’ technologies, of which there are many: engineered landfills with gas collection, incinerators, refuse-derived fuel and staged incinerators are all expensive technologies which fail to solve the garbage problem,” Tangri said.

“Even as engineered landfills attempt to capture methane — a powerful greenhouse gas — they are managed in such a way to increase methane production, much of which escapes to the atmosphere despite the engineers’ best efforts. Landfills also produce large quantities of toxic leachate which contaminates ground and surface waters,” he stressed.

Tangri, together with other environmentalists, also rejected mass burn incinerators as major sources of toxic air emissions and solid hazardous waste in the form of incinerator ash.

“Also, by destroying resources, these incinerators increase the demand for virgin wood, plastic, paper and other materials and causing rising environmental destruction in raw material extraction,” he added.