Town puts garbage to productive use

MANILA, Philippines –

Mayor Rodel de la Cruz

of the municipality of Teresa, Rizal receives local and foreign visitors three times a week. They take up a lot of his time, but he doesn’t mind. He orients everyone who cares to listen on his town’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Facility (ISWMF) where reusable and recyclable waste are processed into building materials, compost and paper charcoal for the community and other interested parties to utilize.

When De la Cruz was elected mayor in 2004, Teresa, a fourth class municipality about 50 kms. from Manila, had a 2,000-square-meter open dumpsite that attracted flies and vermin, and scavengers who made a living picking garbage. By then, Republic Act 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, which mandated that all dump sites be controlled, was four years old.

The mayor quickly went to work and by February 2006, the dumpsite was officially closed. He also mounted an information campaign, tapping civic organizations to distribute leaflets on the provisions of RA 9003, and a stakeholder monitoring system, where the weekly performance of Teresa’s nine barangays, as well as its public and private schools, in composting, segregation and overall cleanliness are rated and published on Performance Monitoring Boards in the plaza. The results are announced at Sunday Mass and cash prizes await the winning school and barangay at the end of the year.

In 2006, the Laguna Lake Development Authority entered the picture with an offer of support from the Laguna de Bay Institutional Strengthening and Community Participation Project (LISCOP), a five-year project funded by the World Bank and the Netherlands government, to build an integrated solid waste management facility in Teresa.

Constructed in 2007, the ISWMF has a waste receiving area, a sorting-shredding-hollow block production area, a composting shed, a hazardous waste facility, an office building, a couple of dump trucks and a service vehicle. It is landscaped and looks like a resort. And in spite of the presence of mountains of segregated trash neatly stacked in a large shed, it does not emit an unpleasant smell.

A parallel initiative, the Laguna de Bay Carbonshed Project, which assists local government in improving the environmental quality of the watershed while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, gave Teresa the opportunity to access the carbon market. The project, through the World Bank-managed Community Development Carbon Fund, finances the purchases of emission reduction credits from reduced methane emissions resulting from waste reduction, recycling and composting in Teresa’s ISWMF. This is under a framework agreement on emission reductions, with the LLDA as intermediary between the World Bank and the local government.

Says the World Bank’s Joe Tuyor, “The additional incentive from the purchase of emission reduction reduces the revenue risks and increases the financial viability of the project.” 

In 2005, Teresa generated 5.7 tons of waste per day. With the ISWMF and the diversion of organic wastes for composting, this was reduced to 3.5 tons per day in 2007, a 38 percent reduction in only two years. The local government’s income from the sale of hollow blocks and compost materials from recycled garbage has also increased.

The recycling and segregation campaign in Teresa is a continuing effort, assisted by industries and commercial enterprises in the area who have donated posters and flyers reminding residents to segregate, recycle and reduce waste. A local ordinance has also been enacted creating a 10-year Solid Waste Management Program in the town.

This article is based on materials published by the World Bank Philippines in www.worldbank.org.ph