City Hall hires 200 scavengers

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu City government has commissioned 200 scavengers to undertake massive collection of plastic wastes that have accumulated at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill.

Councilor Nida Cabrera, chairperson of the committee on environment, said each scavenger will be paid P0.60 for every kilo collected.

“Makapanginabuhi gyod sila out of the plastics collected. Kaniadto maglibog ta asa ilabay ang plastics karon naa nay proper management and facility nga ma-utilize nato into good use ang plastics,” she said.

 The plastic will be processed at the newly-installed “plastic to fuel” facility at the motor pool area of the landfill in Barangay Inayawan.

 The P14-million waste plastics processing facility donated by Yokohama-based Mansei Recycle Systems Co. Ltd. will be fully operational in January next year. The equipment, SWMB chairman Jade Ponce said, will gradually address the accumulated garbage in the old landfill, which was built and funded in 1998  by the Japan International Cooperation Agency. 

The P209 million landfill was designed to last only for seven years and was supposed to be closed in 2005 yet. It occupies 15.41 hectares but only about 11 hectares was used for actual dumping.

Cabrera said they are expecting to collect at least five tons of processed plastics in a day.

 The tons of wastes deposited at the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill will be converted to “fluff plastic fuels” to be sold at P1 or 50¢ per kilo to APO Cement Plant in Naga and other local cement manufacturers or paper mill companies as fossil fuels. The final rate, though, will still be deliberated by the members of the Solid Waste Management Board.

The facility, according to Yasuhiro Yamaguchi, Mansei advisor at Carbon Free Consulting Corporation, is capable of recycling plastic waste at the landfill into plastic fluff fuel and can process at least 50 tons of waste in eight hours, producing around five tons of plastic fuel.

Aside from livelihood, Cabrera said the scavengers’ undertaking would have a great impact to the environment as it will address water and soil pollution.

“This would help us in the reduction of plastics nga dili na moadto sa dagat and modaot sa atong environment. Also, ma-manage na nato ang disposal sa plastics in the city,” she said.— (FREEMAN)