JICA wants to upscale plastic recycling plant

CEBU, Philippines – After two years of the pre-installation of the pilot project, the Japan International Cooperation Agency proposed to Cebu City government to upscale the Mansei Recycling Plant in Barangay Inayawan.

The P15-million recycling plant is currently converting soft plastic into fluff fuel at no cost to the government. It was donated by JICA.

The upscale proposal includes segregation at the source which will necessitate segregation at the household and barangay levels.

In his visit to City Hall yesterday, Takeshi Konishi of Mansei Recycle Systems Co., a firm based in Yokohama, Japan, said the segregation in the household makes the equipment organization simple and suppresses the investment cost for a materials recovery facility.

Also, Konishi said JICA wants the private sectors and the public to be involved in the city’s Waste Management System.

As of now, private sector is not involved in the system.

The machine is seen to give se-veral benefits to the city government including cutting the costs for use of distant landfill use and providing training and job opportunities to plant workers. The city can also use the equipment after the survey period.

Konishi also said that the city can save up to P4.2 million on the new plastic recycling system compared to conventional landfilling and that cement manufacturers who buy the fuel can increase utilization of high-qua-lity alternative fuel more.

Cebu City Solid Waste Management Board chairman Janesis Ponce said the board will deliberate JICA’s on proposal yet.

“Dako og impact sa city. We need to upscale it if we want to solve. There’s a chance that having an RDF (Our Proposal-Waste Management System) in an upscaled version nga fully functional na siya, to solve 30 percent of the garbage problem,” he said.

During the visit yesterday, City Councilor Nida Cabrera also presented the importance of the waste plastics processing facility inside the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in manufacturing the plastic fluff fuel.

Cabrera, chairwoman of the City Council Committee on Environment, said the facility reduces the emissions through the use of alternative fuel.

“JICA supervises the overall implementation, assumes the cost of the equipment as well as the survey expenses including costs of transport and importation of the equipment, taxes and customs duties. JICA entrusts the actual implementation to Mansei Recycle Systems Co. Ltd., which provides technical capacity development for the operation and maintenance of the intermediate waste plastics processing facility by sending managerial and engineering staff from Japan and providing marketing support for the sale of the fluff fuel,” she said, adding that the city government is earning revenue from the sale of the fluff fuel and will assume ownership of the facility next year.

The city fully shut down the Inayawan landfill’s operations in January 2015. But the Mansei recycling plant was allowed to operate inside the landfill where it produces plastic fuel fluff sold to Cemex.

With the plan of JICA to scale up the plastic waste recycling and fluff fuel production, Cemex energy director Eduardo Bernard Pons said the company will continue the smooth collaboration with the city government with the aim of reducing the non-biodegradable wastes generated by the city.

“The length of the contract is not our main concern. The most important thing is to make this initiative to keep on going. It has been a very successful proof of concept, meaning, proving that this project is a good way to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill,” he said.

Pons said the company has destroyed the toxins in the plastic in the “most efficient way to dispose it” knowing that plastics can be normally destroyed in 100 years. — /BRP (FREEMAN)