The National Capital Region needs an “efficient and eco-friendly” engineered sanitary landfill outside it to be able to fix its garbage woes.
At a media briefing in Quezon City, Rufo Colayco, Metro Clark Waste Management Corp. president, said they have put up waste-to-energy waste to a “higher” level to accommodate the huge volume of solid wastes to be generated by Central Luzon and Northern Luzon. He said they have developed an advanced centralized recycling facility at their waste management center in Tarlac within the Clark Freeport and Special Economic Zone to segregate waste materials for recycling and processing into secondary fuel.
With such technology, Colayco told reporters that the residual wastes to be disposed at the landfill could be reduced by 70 percent, extending the lifespan of the solid waste management for at least 50 years.
“Ten years is very short. The basic problem in the Philippines is the growing population, especially in Metro Manila,” MCWMC founder Holger Holst said.
Despite the increased effort to segregate wastes, he said, “what we need in the Philippines is a bullet-proof energy that is [already] tried and tested. You can sort out [garbage] manually but machines can do it better.”
“[Some] 100 metric tons of wastes would need [at least] 600 hectares of land for a facility. But we don’t have that. Besides, properties are expensive [here]in Metro Manila. The only solution to garbage is to burn it. But it does not sound so good in the first place,” he said.
“Metro Manila needs such solution because we do not have enough space,” he added.
He, however, said that MCWMC's technology to transform waste to usable energy “for generations to come” could guarantee “secured and sustainable” waste management solution for Luzon, including the “highly urbanized” metro.
According to Colayco, MCWMC is still waiting for a green light from the Bases Conversion and Development Corp. so that they could be able to proceed with the implementation of their $210-million waste-to-energy project.
"We should have implemented the project eights months ago if only the timetable was followed," he said.
"When I was then the BCDA head, I was the proponent of the Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway [project]. The National Economic and Development Authority was objecting first but after some explaining, it also approved the project. It is that way here [in our country]. It is so democratic. I just don't know why our proposal has not yet been approved [up to now]," he added.
Colayco's son, Joel, said that “it is not our dream to produce energy but [mainly] to address the problem of garbage."