THE 19-hectare sanitary landfill in Rodriguez, Rizal will reach its full capacity by 2022, Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu said Thursday, and encouraged the public to recycle their garbage as part of efforts to reduce the country’s solid waste.
“The expected life [of the] Rodriguez [landfill] is until 2022,” Cimatu told reporters in a Palace news briefing.
Cimatu stressed that alternative solutions, including recycling, would be needed to solve the country’s solid waste problem.
The Rodriguez landfill receives more than 4,000 to 6,000 tons of solid waste from different parts of Metro Manila, Cimatu said.
Other alternatives that could be explored include waste-to-energy methods to lessen the waste and provide power to communities, he said.
He said the Rodriguez landfill was the alternative landfill after the permanent closure in September of the Payatas landfill in Quezon City.
But while the 20-hectare Payatas landfill served the metropolis as a dumpsite for more than 15 years, the 19-hectare Rodriguez sanitary landfill was not expected to have a similar life span because of the increasing volume of waste in the capital region.
Cimatu said they were studying other alternatives, but stressed the need for Metro Manila to practice recycling, since the landfills were just “stopgap” measures.
He cited Metro Manila residents who did not generate trash and resorted to recycling.