DESPITE the passage of the Solid Waste Management Law, the Philippines’ annual production of solid waste has been increasing over the years due to inconsistent policies and a lack of waste facilities and landfills, the Commission on Audit (COA) lamented.
In its performance audit of the country’s Solid Waste Management Program released last May 3, the COA noted that waste management continued to be a concern, adding that the country’s solid waste reached 16.63 million metric tons in 2020, rising to 19.76 million metric tons in 2030, and 24.50 million metric tons by 2045.
“After two decades of implementation, the program may not be seen as progressively achieving its goals and objectives, as manifested by the steadily increasing volume of generated solid waste, including the many gaps noted in the program implementation. Instead of reducing solid waste generation, it steadily increased through the years,” the COA said.
“We identified key challenges that led to this scenario, such as the inconsistent implementation of waste segregation and waste diversion,
wherein the significant presence of mixed wastes was found in landfills.”
The COA explained that the condition reduced the capacity of Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) for diversion, causing the waste volume in
landfills to exceed capacity and shortening their serviceable lifespans.
The commission added that there were insufficient waste facilities and landfills to service local government units and barangays nationwide.
The COA report also said that, as of 2021, only 11,637 MRFs were servicing 16,418 barangays, meaning such services were only available
to 39.05% out of the country’s 42,046 total barangays.
Furthermore, the country only had 245 total operational Sanitary Landfills (SLFs) servicing 478 LGUs as of 2021, a figure which is
29.25% out of the country’s total 1,634 LGUs.
“Due to the limitation in disposal facilities, the operation of illegal dumpsites could not be avoided in some LGUs,” COA said.
The COA found that several Environmental Management Bureau (EMB)-funded MRFs, including their units/sets of equipment, had yet to
be established or made operational due to a lack of appropriate land siting or delays in utilization by the LGUs.
the P124.22 million earmarked for MRF establishment and solid waste management (SWM) equipment fabrication which remained outstanding as
of June 2022 at least P555.65 million worth of equipment or at least 635 units or sets of equipment which are reported as not operational as of May 31, 2022 due to various reasons, but mainly due to lack of electricity lines some MRFs lacking the mandated recording mechanism, including a
weighing scale, and thus would result in unreliable and incomplete data on waste diversion Uncollected and unprocessed waste materials, the COA said, also accumulated in some MRFs due to LGUs’ difficulties in processing, selling, or disposing of their recyclable wastes.
“This accumulation of waste is overwhelming the MRFs and posing a risk to possible environmental hazards if waste is not managed soon,” state
auditors warned.