2025 YEARENDER
People rise up again and protests flood the streets in 2025. It is a year that saw the rift widened not just between the ruling dynasties, but also the divide between the powerful and the marginalized. Injustice was seen in floods that ravaged cities and villages amidst corruption of contractors and politicians. Human rights score victories against trumped up charges. Issues in Davao City are brought up — floods, public transportation, human rights, good governance and accountability. Our stories reflect the changing tides of 2025.
DAVAO CITY, Philippines – As 2026 enters, the city government is pursuing the expensive waste-to-energy (WTE) project to address Davao’s garbage disposal problem, but environmental groups are pushing ongoing community-based and environmentally sound solutions that deserve support.
Davao City’s sanitary landfill in New Carmen, Tugbok, is now at overcapacity for the past years, as the city collects 750 tons of garbage on average every day from 145 barangays except in the rural areas.
The wastes have been unsegregated despite existing rules and systems that were once enforced strictly in the past years.
To address this issue, the city government has tried two approaches: constructing a new 9-hectare landfill near the present one, costing ?559 million.
The second approach is the pursuit of the ?5-billion, 10-hectare WTE facility in Biao Escuela, Tugbok District, supported by Japanese funding through JICA.
The project aims to reduce dependence on landfills and convert residual waste into energy. But the project is facing delays in requirements set by the national government, as well as opposition from environmental groups.
Green approaches at barangays
The city’s growing waste problem is not without hope. Several organizations and institutions are already implementing initiatives that the city government can replicate and institutionalize.
Across Davao City, private and community groups are turning waste into an income source instead of an environmental burden.
One example is the women-led Toril Kalambuan Association (TKA), which empowers women by upcycling non-biodegradable materials such as plastic wrappers, straws, and paper into handicrafts. The organization helps reduce plastic and other residual waste in the Toril District while serving as an income-generating project (IGP).
Founder Elena Mabano has expanded training to women from various churches and organizations across Mindanao.
“We are not just doing this purely for income generation, we also think that is an effort to preserve our ecology for our next generation, as we know how bad the garbage problem is,” Mabano said in Bisaya.
Another model is the Mintal Resource Collectors’ Association (MiRCA), which collects recyclable materials from residential areas and subdivisions in Barangay Mintal. MiRCA is the pilot site for the international PHINLA (Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka) program on solid waste management, which aims to empower barangay waste collectors and address local waste issues.
“Our garbage collection has become our source of income, aside from reducing wastes in our barangay. It greatly helped in finding another source of income, and it’s become stable. It’s hitting two birds with one stone,” said Divina Morales, MiRCA’s property custodian, in Bisaya.
Private companies are also recycling single-use plastics and transforming them into usable products. Winder Recycling Company and Envirotech Waste Recycling Inc., both located in Barangay Sasa, process PET bottles, candy wrappers, junk food packaging, sacks, and other plastic waste into durable and sustainable materials.
Beyond non-biodegradable waste, the city can also replicate initiatives that process organic waste.
LimaDOL Upcycling Corp. and Apo Natural Farms operate black soldier fly (BSF) facilities in Barangay Tacunan, Tugbok District, where larvae consume food waste and dead animals instead of allowing these materials to accumulate in landfills.
BSF larvae can process 12–15 kilograms of fresh food waste in 10–12 days. Their excrement, called frass, is harvested, air-dried, and packaged as nutrient-rich organic fertilizer.
“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,” said Peter Damary, FiveDOL CEO, in an interview with MindaNews.
Schools have also been strictly enforcing their own No Single-Use Plastics policies. The Assumption College of Davao banned single-use plastics as early as 2017, followed by Mintal Comprehensive High School and Ateneo de Davao University in 2018. More schools followed suit in 2019, including the University of the Immaculate Conception, Maa National High School, Davao City National High School, San Pedro College, USEP Mintal and Obrero Campuses, F. Bangoy National High School, and Holy Cross of Davao College.
Circular Economy
All these initiatives fall on the Circular Economy 2025 campaign of Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (IDIS), which is promoting a model of production and consumption that emphasizes sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling materials for as long as possible—extending product lifecycles and reducing waste.
Its program coordinator, Lemuel Manalo, said that adopting a circular economy can boost competitiveness, spur innovation, promote economic growth, and create jobs.
He explained that the traditional “linear” economy follows a take-make-dispose pattern, where raw materials are extracted, made into products, used, and eventually discarded.
IDIS emphasized that a circular economy is a regenerative system based on three principles: designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems—approaches that Davao City can adopt to better manage its growing waste problem.
Weak implementation and management
As these approaches address the garbage disposal issue, environmental groups and city officials alike point to poor waste management practices in households and barangays that contribute to the problem.
“It’s not practice at households, it should start with segregating and recycling what still can be used. Biodegradables such as food waste can be placed in composting bins for fertilizers and other use,” Manalo said.
Manalo also points out that waste disposal in Davao is rising rapidly compared to the solutions being implemented amid a growing population.
Around 40% of the city’s garbage comes from food waste, according to the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO), vegetable and fruit residues make up 23.79%, followed by food and kitchen waste at 18.48%.
Diapers, sanitary napkins, and tissues make up 10.41% of the waste stream, followed by yard waste (6.44%), sando bags (5.78%), food wrappers (2.55%), tin cans (2.52%), tetra packs and shampoo bottles (2.49%), shampoo sachets and metallic foils (2.08%), PET bottles (2.13%), assorted papers (2.08%), and colored bottles (1.39%), among others.
Manalo said that a strict implementation of local laws, including a no segregation, no collection policy, would significantly reduce the volume of waste dumped at the landfill and make residents more accountable for their waste.
The weak implementation of RA 9003 (Ecological Solid Waste Management) also contributes to the problem, as most barangays remain non-compliant in building facilities needed to process residual waste.
Out of 182 barangays, only 53 have established Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), while 116 maintain Materials Recovery Systems (MRS).
City Councilor Temujin Ocampo, chair of the committee on environment, previously noted that the lack of MRFs in many barangays is due to insufficient space for establishing processing facilities.
Engineer Lakandiwa Orcullo, acting division head of CENRO’s Environmental Waste Management Division, acknowledged that many barangays set up MRFs and MRSs “for compliance purposes only.” He added that the city is limited in enforcing penalties because the responsibility falls under the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
Collaboration
IDIS said that their concept of a circular economy needs collaborative governance from city government down to the barangays, schools and households.
“We can’t achieve circularity among cities without the LGU’s responsibility adhering to the full implementation of the RA9003 and EPR,” said Miranda.
He added that barangay LGU’s play an important part in facilitating and managing waste generation and distribution through information dissemination, enforcement, establishing systems, and providing facilities for proper disposal.(davaotoday.com)
