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DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 23 Aug) – The City Council of Davao asked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday to set aside a “counterpart fund” worth P3.486 billion for the construction of the country’s first waste-to-energy (WTE) facility in the city.
In a resolution authored by Davao City’s 1st District Councilor Tek Ocampo, the Sangguniang Panlungsod said the country should seize the opportunities offered by the Japanese government to avail of the technical and financial assistance to develop sustainable ways of managing solid waste. Ocampo, a former Davao-based broadcast journalist, said the Japanese government expressed the intention in 2018 to donate 5.013-billion yen, or equivalent to P2. 052 billion, to partially fund the project of the WTE facility in Davao. He said the grant assistance is a continuing offer for the city, which aspires to take advantage of the strong bilateral relations between the two countries. Ocampo added that the current sanitary landfill in Barangay New Carmen has almost reached full capacity due to the increase in the volume of waste in the city, necessitating the “adoption and application of existing technologies that address solid waste management.” The city generates around 600 to 700 tons of waste daily, according to the City Environment and Natural Resources Office. He claimed that WTE is a “proven and efficient technology” adopted and utilized worldwide to reduce the volume of waste and provide an additional source of energy. Ocampo said a feasibility study conducted by the City of Davao with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 2015 “confirmed the viability of the establishment and operation of the WTE facility in the city.” But some sectors are not happy with the proposed WTE facility. Mark Peñalver, executive director of the Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (IDIS), reiterated his stance against a WTE facility in Davao as it would not address the problem of solid waste. He said in a statement that modernization is good as long as it does not create another problem. In the case of the WTE facility, Peñalver said that it would release toxins while it burns up waste to produce power, threatening the air quality, water, food, and health. He said the problem lies with the enforcement of existing environmental laws, specifically the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, which could reduce the waste generated. Peñalver, an environmental lawyer, said the law has yet to be “fully implemented” 22 years after it took effect. The law, he said, requires the identification of non-environmentally acceptable products and packaging (NEAPP). But Peñalver claimed that the National Solid Waste Management Commission, through Resolution No. 1428, released in 2021 the list of NEAPP items, which identified only plastic coffee stirrers and soft drink straws. “[It] is not enough to address the plastic problem in the country,” he stressed. “We can still see a lot of plastic coffee stirrers and straws used in establishments and sold in markets and groceries. Hence, there is a gap in the implementation,” he said. Peñalver said Japan has a “strict monitoring system” for its WTE facilities and a strict implementation of waste management at source with a tedious segregation process. “In the Philippines, we cannot even monitor the implementation of the NEAPP list, how much more monitoring toxins emitted by the incineration facility,” he pointed out. He added that the planned construction of a WTE facility would be “useless and counterproductive” unless the local government strictly complies with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (ESWMA). “Before Davao City invests in unsustainable solutions in solid waste management, it should ensure genuine compliance with the spirit of ESWMA and related laws,” Peñalver said. He said the plastic waste problem could be reduced if the city complies with the law. “There are already good practices in the city that the government can invest in, i.e., the community-based solid waste management projects in Brgy. Mintal and Tacunan and Toril Kalambuan Association. These are initiatives the city should invest in and help replicate to the whole city,” he said. (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)