Metro Manila generates 25% of PH daily trash

MANILA, Philippines—Another reason to thumb one’s nose at ‘’Imperial Manila.”

Residents of the National Capital Region generate so much garbage that they are responsible for one-fourth of the country’s daily output of solid waste, according to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Citing records from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority, the DENR said Metro Manila produces about 8,400 to 8,600 tons of trash per day.

The city’s garbage represents 25 percent of the country’s daily solid waste generation of about 35,000 tons, the DENR said.

About half of the rubbish in Metro Manila is biodegradable wastes such as food scraps, leftovers, and dead animals. About 17 percent are paper, while 16 percent of the wastes are plastics. The rest are metal, ceramics, rubber and leather.

Of the 17 cities in Metro Manila, only nine have a solid waste management plan. About a third of the biodegrable wastes from these nine cities are recycled into compost, Aguinaldo said. But Metro Manila residents rarely do this because of space constraints, she noted.

To minimize wastes from households, Paje has ordered nearly 5,000 homeowners associations in condominiums and subdivisions to segregate their garbage. This would make it easier for local garbage collectors to separate the non-biodegradable trash from the biodegradable and encourage residents to do composting.

“Subdivisions and condominiums are very critical in our advocacy for solid waste management because the residents here are already organized and they are governed by their respective homeowners associations. Getting them to practice waste segregation and composting will hopefully not be as difficult as they will feel immediate benefits in terms of cleaner surroundings,” Paje said

Paje said the department has linked up with 11 local government units in the capital to mandate about 4,717 homeowners associations to set ecological solid waste management system in their neighborhoods.

“This way we will not only reducing the volume of wastes thrown in landfills but also those that are indiscriminately dumped in esteros and other waterways,” Paje said.

The DENR said residents produce so much waste that the very local problem of household garbage has become a national concern.

He noted that the garbage from Metro Manila households is one of the major culprits for the floods and disease outbreaks that plague the city during the rainy season.

“In the analysis of the country’s environmental problems, it always boils down to garbage as the main contributor. From flooding to dengue, from polluted rivers and creeks to mountains of trash, from unnecessary death of fishes that accidentally swallowed plastic bags in the seas to global warming, garbage is the common denominator,” Paje said in a statement Monday .

Untreated and uncollected household garbage end up clogging drainage systems and waterways. Public health officials note that the unsanitary condition in many pockets of Metro Manila have caused outbreaks of diseases such as dengue fever and leptospirosis.

And because uncollected wastes have nowhere to go, they end up blocking local ditches, drainage systems, and rivers, which contribute to the floods.

In an interview on Monday, Emy Aguinaldo, executive director of the National Solid Waste Management Commission, said a Metro Manila resident generates an average of .7 kg of waste per day. This is about 130 percent higher than the global average of waste generated by one person per day, which is at .3 kg.