Less waste, fewer floods, more energy

When Metro Manila floods, we often look up and blame the rain. But sometimes, we should look down.

On Aug. 17, 2026, Metro Manila received a warning written in millimeters: 201.7 millimeters of rain in just five hours. That single figure captured the growing intensity of rainfall confronting our communities. But rainfall alone does not explain why streets become rivers so quickly. The other part of the equation is what happens to the thousands of tons of waste we produce every day.

The Philippines generates an estimated 2.7 million tons of plastic waste every year, while Filipinos consume approximately 163 million sachets every day. That translates to nearly 60 billion sachets entering our economy annually. When these materials are not properly collected, segregated, recycled or recovered, many eventually find their way into drainage systems, esteros, rivers and pumping stations.

When the rain comes, the garbage moves with it. And that is where a waste problem becomes a flooding problem.

A drainage canal does not care whether the obstruction is a plastic bag, a sachet or a discarded bottle. A pump does not distinguish between household waste and other debris. Every piece of garbage occupying space in a waterway reduces the capacity of that system to move water.

This becomes particularly dangerous when extreme rainfall arrives within a compressed period. The Aug. 17 deluge delivered more than 200 millimeters of rain in approximately 300 minutes. When water enters the urban drainage network faster than that network can discharge it, even a system operating under normal conditions can become overwhelmed. Add clogged waterways and drainage systems, and an already difficult situation becomes even worse.

This is why the conversation about flooding must include waste management from the beginning, not as an environmental footnote after flood control projects have been designed, but as a central component of flood prevention itself.

Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, requires every barangay or cluster of barangays to have access to a materials recovery facility. Yet our waste management infrastructure remains uneven, leaving substantial quantities of recyclable and residual waste outside formal recovery systems.

Waste-to-energy is not a magic solution. It does not eliminate the need for segregation, recycling, composting, waste reduction or proper collection. Those must remain at the heart of responsible waste management. But for residual waste that cannot reasonably be reused or recycled, converting suitable waste into electricity can reduce dependence on landfills while giving value to something we currently pay to dispose of.

The Department of Energy has recognized this potential. Under its Green Energy Auction framework, the government has increased the target for waste-to-energy capacity to 400 megawatts.

The opportunity becomes clearer when we look at individual projects. In New Clark City, a planned P4-billion waste-to-energy facility is designed to process approximately 600 tons of waste every day and generate 12 megawatts of electricity.

Every ton diverted from a landfill is a ton that does not have to occupy increasingly scarce land. Every ton properly collected is one less potential obstruction in a drainage system. Every facility capable of safely processing appropriate residual waste creates another layer of protection between our garbage and our waterways.

This is where energy policy, environmental policy and water management policy meet.

Metro Manila’s waste problem is particularly urgent because the capital has limited space and enormous consumption. We cannot continue generating thousands of tons of waste and simply assume that landfills, collection trucks, waterways and local governments will absorb the consequences indefinitely.

The alternative is a genuinely circular approach: reduce the waste we produce, recover reusable materials, recycle what can return to the economy, convert suitable residual waste into energy and safely dispose of what remains. Waste-to-energy should complement, not replace, recycling and recovery.

There is also a strong economic argument for changing the way we think about garbage.

The United Nations Environment Program projects global municipal solid waste to increase from 2.1 billion tons in 2023 to 3.8 billion tons by 2050. Without urgent action, the annual global cost associated with waste, including its effects on health, pollution and climate, could reach $640.3 billion. At the same time, transitioning toward a circular economy could generate an estimated $108.5 billion in annual net economic gains by 2050.

For the Philippines, these numbers should serve as both a warning and an opportunity.

We should stop measuring waste management only by how much garbage we collect after it has already become a problem. We should measure how much we prevent, recover, recycle, convert and, most importantly, keep out of our waterways.

The same principle should apply to water management.

We should not only ask how many pumping stations we have, but how many are operating at full capacity when they are needed most. We should not simply count how many tons of garbage are collected from esteros and drainage systems, but how many tons never reach them in the first place.

This is the kind of governance that turns numbers into outcomes.

Because the next great flood may begin with a storm, but its severity can also be determined by what we did with our garbage before the rain arrived.

We cannot control the clouds. But we can control our waste.

And if we can transform that waste into cleaner waterways, stronger flood defenses and even electricity, then we are no longer simply cleaning up after disasters. We are building resilience before they happen.

That is the opportunity before Metro Manila: less garbage in our drains, less waste in our landfills, more productive use of what remains and fewer communities under water when the rain comes.

The solution to flooding may not only be above us in the sky. Part of it is right beneath our feet.