DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 3 December) — As the city’s garbage landfill at New Carmen is now way beyond capacity, a local firm is suggesting they could help out in solving the problem by introducing an innovative approach at handling organic waste — letting the larvae of black soldier flies (BSF) to consume the waste.
The matured larvae of the BSF (scientific name: Hermetia illumens) would then be harvested and become high-protein animal feed. Meanwhile, the larvae’s manure, called frass, can be used as fertilizer.
FiveDOL Upcycling Corp. — which identifies itself as a “waste management company” — started to make buzz here in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, using five-day old (where the FiveDOL name comes from) BSF larvae to process food waste into animal feed and compost fertilizer.
Fast forward to today, LimaDOL (the other name FiveDOL calls itself, “lima” being five) continues its work with an even stronger drive to cut down food waste in the city, a campaign that has become more urgent because of the situation at the city’s sanitary landfill that is long overdue for replacement.
FiveDOL’s facility is in Barangay Tacunan in Davao City’s Tugbok District.
Data from the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) show that Davao City produces 800 tons of garbage each day, and roughly half of that is biodegradable — waste that could have been composted at home and turned into fertilizer instead.
For Peter Damary, a Swiss national and FiveDOL’s chief executive officer, his company’s technology can be a great alternative in reducing food waste in landfills.
Damary elaborated that one of their project’s missions is to divert food waste from the city’s overflowing landfill and to decrease the production of methane — which is produced in garbage landfills — explaining that it is a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) in the first two decades after it is emitted although it disappears from the atmosphere more quickly.
He added that by processing organic waste, the facility creates two commercially viable products: high-protein animal feed and certified organic fertilizer with the BSF’s frass.
“The environmental motivation [we have in FiveDOL] is to extend the life of the already full landfill and to prevent the anaerobic decomposition of food waste, which makes the landfill the fourth-largest contributor of greenhouse gases in the city,” Damary told MindaNews.
Noel Ferrer, FiveDOL project manager, said that anaerobic decomposition is the breakdown of organic matter by microorganisms in the absence of oxygen. This in turn, he added, would produce more methane.
The World Health Organization states that methane would greatly and indirectly impact the people through its role as a precursor to ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant and a chemical which could be a “health risk.”
“Imagine the people in the landfill interacting with those types of chemicals. It can be dangerous to them,” Ferrer stressed.
Damary said they approached the city government for a possible public-private partnership, wherein the city would provide land and a building for a larger facility, while FiveDOL would fund all internal investments and run the operations. The city would deliver food waste at no cost, and the project would sustain itself through sales of larvae and frass, giving the city a zero-cost way to treat part of its food waste.
He said initial discussions started in October 2022, followed by a site visit and a favorable report from the solid waste technical working group in March 2024.
‘Extremely frustrating’
Damary said a memorandum of understanding was drafted and cleared by the City Legal Office, but it remains unsigned, all the efforts stalled because of elections. “We have yet to see progress from there,” he lamented.
Damary describes FiveDOL’s attempt to partner with the city government as “extremely frustrating.”
MindaNews sought comments on this remark from Engr. Lakandula Orcullo, environmental waste and management division head, but he has not responded. Requests for comment were sent through text messages and e-mail on November 28, and again on December 2.
But in a previous interview, on November 5, Orcullo said that the city has long been seeking partnerships with private companies to help reduce waste.
Damary, however, said that neighboring cities and towns, which he declined to disclose, are interested in incorporating FiveDOL’s technology to their waste management.
Nearby communities in the area, such as Deca Homes in Barangay Mintal, are already partnering with them, he added.
How it works
Ferrer said he collects food waste — like leafy vegetables and leftovers such as rice, gravy, and others — from partner housing associations in areas like Malagos, Tacunan, and Ulas using a car or motorcycle, carrying latons, or large pail containers.
These are then shredded to increase the surface area for consumption.
FiveDOL workers would then put five-day-old black soldier fly larvae to the shredded food waste. The BSF larvae are notably voracious, doubling their size daily, Ferrer notes. An entire tray of larvae is capable of processing between 12 and 15 kilograms of fresh food waste in approximately 10 to 12 days.
Ferrer said that after non-stop consumption of food waste, the larvae reach their optimal size after 18 days.
As they eat non-stop, the larvae emit excrement, which is called frass.
The harvested larvae are prepared for sale, either live or dried. The separated frass is air-dried, away from direct sunlight, before being packaged as nutrient-rich organic fertilizer.
“I believe that this is what we do to save the environment. And more importantly, we go beyond the usual reduce-reuse-recycle process,” Ferrer said.
Alternative to waste-to-energy
For Damary, the waste-to-energy (WTE) approach at waste management is a “misnomer” and is considered a “major issue in terms of pollution.”
He said a WTE facility — which he prefers to call “incinerator” — creates furan, a chemical which can be found in air, water and contaminated soil, described as “very bad for lactating mothers,” lactating mammals, and babies.
“Even WTE facilities … cannot process food waste effectively because [the latter] is wet and has low caloric value. In practice, food waste would still need to be separated out,” Damary pointed out.
He also stresses the financial burden in using the WTE approach, as these plants would require massive investment, and cities typically must pay for every ton delivered to the facility.
This is in contrast, Damary emphasized, to the BSF-based composting model, which is nature-based, low-emission, and generates valuable products like animal feed and organic fertilizer — Greenpecker and BooSterFrass, respectively, in the case of FiveDOL.
City officials, however, seem to lean towards WTE. CENRO’s Orcullo and Marc Dennis Serrano, health and sanitation division chief at the City Health Office, believe that the city’s swelling waste volume makes WTE an “ideal world solution.”
They believe it can reduce the load reaching the landfill and help manage the city’s daily waste output.
Orcullo and Serrano acknowledge environmental concerns but argue that modern WTE facilities, such as those in Japan, follow strict standards with real-time emissions monitoring to manage pollution risks. They note that the Davao WTE project has secured a Japanese grant worth ₱2.5 billion, but local budget gaps have placed the project on hold.
Christian Cambaya, investor assistance and servicing unit head of the Davao City Investment Promotion Center (DCIPC), said that the waste-to-energy project will really be a big investment to reduce trash in the city.
“With the development of the city comes more garbage, obviously. What we are in for is to really help the city develop, and also our waste management will be developed as well,” Cambaya said.
Ultimately, the city frames WTE as part of a broader transition. Officials recognize that the long-term goal, as mandated by Republic Act 9003 (also known as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000), is still zero waste — reduction, reuse, recycling, and resource recovery.
As early as 2020, environmental groups in Davao under the umbrella of the Sustainable Davao Movement (including LimaDOL), Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability, Ecoteneo, Break free from Plastic, and Ecowaste Coalition), have signed an agreement with Barangay Captain Arnold Asobe to push for a zero-waste program in one of Tacunan’s zones.
The movement, back in 2022, mentioned that the BSF strategy, if implemented citywide, “will divert almost 60 percent of Davao’s total waste from the landfill and will remove the need for a WTE incinerator.”
“Instead of funding false solutions such as waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration, the local government unit should … realign its budget to address waste at the source through zero waste solutions pioneered by communities in Mintal and Tacunan,” SDM said in a statement. (Ian Carl Espinosa / MindaNews)
This story is published with the support of Canal France International under the Media for One Health program.
