2026 Sinulog, 5.2 milllion attendees, 1,000 tons garbage

Congratulations to all for a very successful, well-attended Sinulog and Sto. Niño Feast! The 5.2 million 2026 attendees surpassed 2025’s 4M and 2024’s 3M attendees!

Compliments for the punctual start, end of the Sinulog Parade and the lively/beautiful performances with more participants from within and outside Cebu!

The 2026 5.2M Sinulog crowd, however, left 1,000 tons of garbage compared to 290 tons in 2025 and 202.3 tons in 2024. Despite the laudable initiatives to reduce/manage waste for this 2026 Sinulog, more attendees indiscriminately/irresponsibly threw more garbage this time.

How much did the city spend to collect/dispose of this year’s Sinulog basura? In 2025, the City mobilized 85 garbage trucks, 800 sweepers from 6 P.M. Sunday, till 7 A.M. Monday, January 20.

An environmentalist suggested the following costs: To “1.) Labor add 2.) Expenses for the eco-stations, 3.) Fuel expenses for the trucks, 4.) Hauling fee (kung apil ang private hauler), 5.) Tipping fee sa temporary dumpsite/landfill for the disposed garbage, 6.) Sanitation cost kay limpyohan ang mga trucks ug ubang gamit inig kahuman, 7.) Increased carbon footprint/emission, 8.) Global warming, and more.”

Input the recent Binaliw tragedy, the 9.) Added costs to lives, families/communities.

Shouldn’t this be the right time to rethink/reflect/revise/reform/reorganize the waste management policies/practices especially for big public events?

Must all Sinulog/Santo Niño celebrations always have to end up with so much volume of unsegregated garbage?

No choice, according to mainstream truck-based garbage advocates. With more people, expect more waste. This defeatist/false mindset is one of the problems why Sinulog/Santo Niño Feast end up with so much garbage!

It’s an open invitation for people to dispose of their garbage, anywhere/anytime/without segregation/without any sense of responsibility for the protection of our earth, our common home!

People and their hands generate garbage, sure, but indiscriminate/irresponsible disposal of waste IS NOT/NEVER THE OPTION for wastes!

Garbage/waste can be responsibly segregated/composted/reduced/recycled and so on. Garbage does not have to be collected/disposed by trucks to landfills/dumpsites.

This linear paradigm and mentality absolving people’s discipline/responsibility for managing their own wastes as useless items should be challenged.

People have to be educated about alternative paradigms, options for managing wastes AS RESOURCES, not left to think/dispose of waste as useless items they can throw anywhere as if the whole earth was one big garbage pit or dump.

Cebu City, oft-bannered as the City of Faith, transforms into the City of Filth during the January Sinulog/Santo Niño celebrations,

Pope Francis’ Laudato Si reminders remain continually forgotten/lost in the midst of the secular festivities: “we face an urgent crisis, when, thanks to our actions, the earth has begun to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.” (No.21).

This biblical verse as well - “The earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail.” (Rom 8:22)

Didn’t the Binaliw basura tragedy just happen before the city festivities? Did the attendees easily forget Binaliw’s dead, injured, and the grieving families and communities? Did the Cebu City attendees not hear or understand that there is “inseparable bond between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society and interior peace?” (Laudato Si, No. 10)

Why leave behind basura while enjoying the performances and lifting praises and petitions to God?

Pope Francis’ timeless reminder: “We must…[resolve] to transform our hearts/our lifestyles/and the public policies ruling our societies. The world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others. Intergenerational solidarity is not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us. ” (Paragraph159)

What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?