Dagupan pilots energy project

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines—Dagupan is piloting a Waste to Worth project to be undertaken by a manufacturing firm, which would convert the city’s solid waste into energy and end its garbage crisis.

In an agreement signed on Monday, Mayor Belen Fernandez allowed Procter and Gamble (P&G) Philippines to conduct a feasibility study for the operation of a Waste to Worth facility here.

Lawyer Mimi Lopez Malvar, P&G country government relations manager, who presented the project to Fernandez and other city government officials, said the facility would be able to make use of the 120 metric tons of garbate that the city produces a day.

“The city will even be presented as a model to the whole world,” Malvar said.

Fernandez described the project as “a blessing.”

The city’s open dump has been in operation for more than 50 years and has been ordered closed by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. But the city’s small land area prevents Dagupan from building a sanitary landfill. Gabriel Cardinoza, Inquirer Northern Luzon