CALAMBA CITY, Laguna (PIA) – Local government units across Laguna are ramping up efforts to address the growing challenge of waste management by constructing new sanitary landfills, the Laguna Provincial Government Environment and Natural Resources Office (PGENRO) said.
These facilities aim to properly dispose of solid waste, prevent environmental degradation, and ensure public health as these are equipped with features for waste compaction, leachate collection, and gas management.
“We have LGUs that operate sanitary landfills. Kalayaan is the number 1 with the best practice for this. In the 4th district, there are many towns with sanitary landfill like Famy, which has just been built, the town of Mabitac also already has one”, PGENRO waste and management and pollution control division head Ricarte Castillo stated.
Sanitary landfills serve as the backbone of waste management, providing an environmentally safe way to dispose solid waste. However, the capacity and design of each landfill often depend on the volume of waste generated by a municipality.
To properly know the exact value, LGUs conduct waste audits to determine their community’s total waste output, thus allowing them to tailor solutions that avoid over- or under-utilization of resources.
“The space for each fill has been studied because there are categories based from and how much they produce waste we call it Category 1 to Category 4. Usually, our municipalities [in Laguna] are only category 1, only a small amount of waste, maximum of 15 tonnes per day where they throw it on their sanitary landfill,” Castillo explained.
Other municipalities and cities in the province have partnered with waste haulers and private landfill operators to address waste management more efficiently and aim to ensure that waste is properly collected, transported, and disposed of in compliance with environmental standards.
Though landfills in each municipality are not mandated and are simply an initiative of the LGUs, Castillo has called on the public to at least actively participate in waste segregation and disposal efforts to ensure proper waste management.
“Waste management is not just a responsibility of municipalities or LGUs because the success of waste management is also up to us. I hope we always do waste segregation because if there is waste segregation, waste recovery will be easier and we will be able to help our informal waste sectors and in the same way, there will be less waste that is just dumped in sanitary landfills,” he said.
The official added that if Lagunenses want to see real progress in waste management, everyone should do their part as discipline is also crucial in waste management. (AM, CH/PIA-4A)
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