Rechiel Antones, 36, manages a printing shop in Southville 6 in Calamba City, Laguna, southeast of Metro Manila. It’s also near a massive landfill that seemed no number of sanitation citations could fully close.

A resident for 11 years, she said going through her pregnancy in 2023 while living in the government resettlement site was tough. One of the main factors: her nostrils being attacked by the foul odor coming from the area’s northern portion, contributing to her nausea.

Southville 6 is an uphill trek. Upon reaching Block 24, a wall made of “yero,” or galvanized iron sheets usually used for roofs, awaits. The distance between the wall and the doorsteps of the residential block is around 10 steps. Beyond the wall is the beautiful Mt. Makiling on the horizon, and another mountain, much nearer, but more dangerous.

The wall hides the 6.6-hectare area owned by SB Hain Enterprises and General Services Inc. for its sanitary landfill, which residents believed had violated regulations that would make living next to a landfill bearable. 

Residents of Block 24, Southville 6 in Brgy. Kay-anlog, Calamba City are just a couple of steps away from the landfill operated by SB Hain Enterprises and General Services Inc. Photos by Jelo Ritzhie Mantaring

The result was a stinking mountain of waste; the foot of the trash heap already at the barrier near households. Many, including Antones, saw the true scale of the waste when another resident posted on social media a drone footage of the landfill. Landfill sites should not be within 250 meters of residential areas, according to government regulations.

“Feeling mo nandito lang sa tabi mo ‘yong basurahan,” said Antones, whose house is not at Block 24 but farther down in the residential area.

“[Kahit] nakatakip sa unan…parang gusto mong biyakin ang ulo mo sa sobrang sakit dahil sa amoy na naamoy mo na hindi dapat naamoy ng isang buntis (It feels like the landfill is beside you. Even if you cover your head with a pillow, you want to split your head because of the odor that a pregnant woman should not be smelling),” she said.

[Kahit] nakatakip sa unan… parang gusto mong biyakin ang ulo mo sa sobrang sakit dahil sa amoy na naamoy mo na hindi dapat naamoy ng isang buntis.

Rechiel Antones, 36

As complaints continued to rise over the years, and also to fulfill his campaign promise, Calamba City Mayor Ross Rizal served a cease and desist order to the facility in November 2023, expecting the facility would correct its violations. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in July 2020 served the same order due to “numerous violations” to the terms and conditions of its environmental compliance certificate.

SB Hain complied with the temporary closure, again. Now, the landfill has been covered with soil, no stench detected, but it does not mean that waste completely vanished from sight. Sacks of garbage, plastic bottles, and even sachets are still surfacing from the ground. At least for now, there is no fresh garbage being sent to the site.

The mountain of waste at the Category 4 landfill in Brgy. Kay-anlog, Calamba City. July 2023 vs. April 2024. First photo shows a Screenshot from a video contributed by a resident to Jelo Ritzhie Mantaring. second photo was taken by Mantaring.

The country has seen similar situations with disastrous consequences play out before. Nearly 25 years ago, the Philippines made international headlines when a landslide, caused by a huge municipal garbage dump, at the community of “Lupang Pangako” (‘promised land’ in English) in Quezon City killed at least 200 people. The international outcry prompted pledges of reform, further fueled by growing pressure to recycle more and dump less.  

Yet a six-month investigation carried out by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reveals that the Philippines is yet again on the precipice of a catastrophic garbage crisis, this one caused by broken pledges and poor planning after The Promised Land Disaster.

Analysis of data requested or scraped from the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau (EMB), the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC), and documents of local government units (LGUs) sourced from the NSWMC website expose a cascading series of failures on policies designed, but not enforced, to reduce the amount of garbage destined for landfills and build landfills to handle the mounting volume of garbage. 

This investigation shows not only the current scale of the garbage crisis facing the country but also the decades of policy failure that enabled us to get to this point, again. 

The most massive landfills are full or filling up fast

Nemar Mendoza, the incumbent barangay captain of Kay-anlog, said SB Hain is still responsible for waste disposal, as it was contracted by the city government. The Calamba City government has yet to respond to questions about how long they are locked into an agreement with SB Hain.

With the temporary closure of the landfill, for now, Calamba City’s rubbish is channeled to another landfill in Batangas, Mendoza said.

SB Hain has another Category 4 landfill project located in Barangay San Jose Sico in Batangas City tagged as “under construction” on EMB’s recent data.

Mendoza said if the landfill built in their barangay opens again after SB Hain corrects its violations, it might face community resistance.

“Sa barangay may hihingiin na kondisyon na ilang truck ang magtatapon, sa ilang bayan…Kukunin namin ang lebel ng taas kasi delikado na (From the barangay’s part, we will be asking for conditions such as the number of trucks entering the site to dump the waste, from how many provinces. We will ask about the height because it might be dangerous already),” he said.

“Pagkaganun ulit na hindi sila sa susunod sa pagkasunduan, mas maganda na wala na rin sa daming naapektuhan (If they do not follow the agreement again, it would be better that the landfill would not operate because many are affected.),” he said.

SB Hain has yet to respond to PCIJ’s request for comments.

The SB Hain-operated landfill started as a Category 1 site in July 2018 before becoming Category 4 a year later. The change signaled the facility becoming bigger, thus accommodating more waste. 

Category 4 facilities, the highest classification according to government standards, serve either highly urbanized cities (HUCs) or a group of local government units (LGUs) that are seen to produce high volumes of residual waste.

The Kay-anlog landfill receives a thousand tons of refuse daily, or could fill over 333 garbage trucks commonly used in Metro Manila, according to EMB data. The data showed that the waste comes from 16 towns and cities across Laguna and neighboring provinces of Cavite and Batangas. With the temporary closure, these LGUs must transport their waste somewhere else.

Based on PCIJ’s analysis of EMB data, as of June 2023, four of the 18 biggest landfills in the Philippines have already maxed out their capacity.

Aside from the landfill in Calamba, which was listed as operational in the most recent government data, the other three can be found in the cities of Bacolod in Negros Occidental, General Santos in South Cotabato, and Davao — all of which are HUCs.

“If the landfill already exceeded its capacity and the dumping of waste continues then it’s not safe. If the height is increasing, it could result in a ‘waste slide,’” Maria Antonia Tanchuling, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of the Philippines – Diliman, said in Filipino.

The data shows the four disposal sites are planning to expand their facilities to extend their service years, or the expected time that they could still accommodate garbage before meeting their capacity. But several others, across all categories, are also about to pass their limits by next year. The same data shows that 23 new facilities were set up from 2021 to 2022, while 38 others are being constructed.

The state of landfills underscores the longstanding need to address the country’s waste problem when discarding trash in these facilities — the final disposal site of residual waste or those that cannot be recycled or composted — is supposed to be the last resort.

“Ultimately, we would like to move towards less waste that (is) generated, more segregation, more waste utilization, such that hindi na dumadating ‘yong basura sa landfills kumbaga (waste no longer end up in landfills) if you want to have a sustainable solid waste management,” Tanchuling said. 

“Just because we are able to provide good landfills doesn’t mean it’s good practice,” she added.

Landfills currently being built will quickly be overwhelmed

The disaster at the Promised Land municipal dump, or the Payatas dump site, prompted the legislation of Republic Act No. 9003 or the “Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.” The law pushed the Philippines to close dangerous open dump sites and adopt the usage of sanitary landfills. But meeting these standards is about to become impossible.

While EMB data shows there are 296 operating landfills across the country as of June 2023, the Commission on Audit (COA) has earlier flagged that the number of landfills was insufficient.

The government audit, released in May 2023, said there is “a need to increase the rate at which these facilities need to be established and remain operational to ensure that the amount of solid waste can still be treated in an environmentally safe and sound manner.”

“If left unsolved, this looming amount of waste is susceptible to more problems as it goes into the waste stream, causing stress to public health and increasing waste management costs,” state auditors said.

The COA’s warning banks on the increasing trend of waste generation in the country despite the enforcement of RA No. 9003, a two-decade-old landmark legislation that also established mechanisms to minimize waste, among others.

State auditors noted the Philippines’ annual waste has been growing. From 9 million tons in 2000, they forecast it could reach nearly 24.5 million tons in 2040. 

The DENR-backed NSWMC is showing on its website a projection that the number might be over 23 million tons already in just two years, or by 2025. This could translate to over 7.87 million garbage trucks, with Quezon City in the capital region seen to have the highest projected amount of waste in all LGUs.

Waste diversion programs fall short and fail to avert mounting trash crisis 

In front of the barangay hall at Kay-anlog is a shed with four big cages. The shed serves as the village's eco-center where residents can deposit recyclable materials such as paper, carton, and plastic bottles.

Kay-anlog has an eco-center placed in front of the barangay hall, where residents can deposit recyclable materials such as plastic bottles. Photo by Jelo Ritzhie Mantaring

Village chief Mendoza said those who have been delivering materials to the eco-center get incentives such as rice, groceries, and even diapers and milk.

This kind of practice could be seen as a measure of waste diversion. Waste diversion, according to RA 9003, is achieved through reuse, recycling, composting, and other resource recovery activities. Simply put, junk must be diverted and redirected from landfills, and marketable materials must be recovered.

Professor Tanchuling said biodegradable wastes, such as food and yard wastes, are still being dumped in landfills, which occupy so much space. 

Mixed waste produces smell and gas, including methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Government data suggests that about half of the garbage produced in the Philippines is biodegradable matter.

On average, Filipinos throw away 0.4 kilograms of trash every day. It’s less than half of what the Japanese people produce (0.89 kilograms) and five times smaller than Americans (4.9 pounds or 2.2 kilograms). This might be the case but the amount generated by the Philippines is already too much for what is destined for landfills.

Crispian Lao, founding president of the Philippine Alliance for Recycling and Materials Sustainability (PARMS), said it was vital to “(increase) the infrastructure for collection, recovery, proper disposal of waste and we need to educate our consumers to improve on consumption patterns.” Lao is also NSWMC’s vice chairperson and private sector representative. 

LGUs are expected to have a waste diversion rate of at least 25% within five years from the law’s adoption and increase it every three years. Lao said the NSWMC resolved to increase it to 50% and it has yet to decide when to have a higher goal. For now, it was the “realistic” target, he said.

Decades have passed and still, waste diversion is not fully practiced in the Philippines. The ultimate manifestation: mixed wastes, with sorting still happening in landfills. 

Waste diversion is measured in the country through the amount of waste put into materials recovery facilities (MRFs). The law mandates the establishment of MRFs in barangays, which would “receive mixed waste for final sorting, segregation, composting, and recycling.”

The lone eco-center in the 272-hectare Kay-anlog seems difficult to reach and small to cater to the more than 20,000 residents of the barangay. 

But prescribed MRFs are complete with composting capabilities, and not just storage for recyclables. In Malabon City, the MRF in Barangay Dampalit has a biodigester that can process food scraps and other organic wastes into biogas. The biogas could fire up the facility’s stove which waste workers sometimes use to cook food. Within the area of the MRF, the village has put up an e-waste recycling site where it stores and dismantles discarded electronic products such as television sets.

It’s a good example, but the more than 42,000 communities across the archipelago battle difficulties such as land availability in setting up the facilities. Citing EMB data, the COA said only 4 out of 10 barangays access the 11,637 MRFs nationwide. 

According to available government profiles sourced through the NSMWC online, Quezon City, Marikina, Makati, Pasig, Muntinlupa, and Pateros in Metro Manila are among the LGUs dumping their waste in Category 4 landfills that have fewer than half of their barangays with access to MRFs.

The COA, in its analysis, also said there was “limited visibility” in waste diversion accomplishments across the country as the EMB has incomplete data for MRFs. 

“Only five out of 16 regions have passed the data completeness threshold. Among those five, no region has met its target based on the average rates from the 10-year SWM (Solid Waste Management) Plans,” it added.

“Data is critical, however, it’s also expensive to collect data,” Lao said, noting that difficulties in extracting data could be due to lack of funds, manpower, and resources. 

The COA also confirmed in its validation that some LGUs lack qualified personnel or measuring equipment to maintain MRF records.

Corporations given a free pass on polluting plastics 

Legislation aimed at forcing big businesses to recycle plastic has still left many issues unaddressed, according to experts. RA No. 11898 introduces the extended producer responsibility (EPR) approach in the country, requiring large enterprises with more than P100 million worth of assets to recover their plastic packaging waste.

With the EPR Act of 2022, big companies are now responsible for the products they send to the market until after consumers have used them. Firms must recover 20% of their plastic waste by 2023, and the recovery rate must increase yearly up to 80% by 2028.

The legislation is vital in tackling the waste problem in the country, according to experts. Filipinos use almost 164 million pieces of sachets and 48 million shopping bags per day, according to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives in 2019.

But the EMB said only 798 of the expected 4,000 big companies have submitted their EPR program with the government, as of December 2023. (Read related story: Implementation of law requiring PH firms to manage plastic wastes still falls short) 

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Meanwhile, Miko Aliño of Break Free From Plastic said stakeholders must also think of preventing plastic production and not only seeing the materials as waste to be disposed of. 

“We continually look for viable alternatives to packaging while ensuring the alternatives of packaging would not impose more environmental harm and more importantly remain to be economically competitive,” said Lao of PARMS, which registered as a producer responsibility organization to help firms implement their EPR schemes. 

The industry group also has members and partners that are fast-moving consumer-goods companies, or those that manufacture products that sell quickly as consumers almost use them daily, such as food products, beverages, and toiletries. The companies include Coca-Cola Philippines, Nestle, and Unilever, which are also among the top plastic-polluting corporations based on Break Free From Plastic’s 2023 brand audit.

LGU waste management plans languish in limbo 

LGUs are required to create 10-year solid waste management plans, complete with targets and timetables related to handling their garbage. But before they can implement those plans, the NSWMC needs to approve them.

Per the law, the plans must prioritize all feasible reuse, recycling, and composting programs while identifying the amount of landfill and transformation capacity needed for solid waste that cannot be reused, recycled, or composted.

Some of the plans will end by 2024, including Malabon City’s. The Malabon City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) is set to develop a new 10-year plan that will start next year. 

Mark Lloyd Mesina, Malabon’s CENRO chief, said its waste generation per capita has decreased to around 0.75 kilograms per day from 0.83 kilograms in 2014. Using the previous rate, the NSWMC estimated Malabon would produce around 115,000 tons of waste in 2023.

LGUs conduct the waste analysis and characterization study to determine its waste generation per capita rate and prepare the 10-year solid waste management plan. The study for Malabon was sponsored by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority in 2023.

The CENRO chief also said the city diverts around 65% of its waste, noting that all barangays in Malabon have access to MRFs, but some have to partner with junk shops due to lack of available space to build the facility.

Waste workers of Barangay Dampalit, Malabon City compost biodegradable waste in the village’s materials recovery facility. They also turn food waste into biogas through the biodigester in the MRF. Photos by Jelo Ritzhie Mantaring

“Every year dapat 5% tumataas (the rate should have a 5% increase) until such time na (that)… most of the garbage will be recycled,” Mesina said of the city’s waste diversion target. “We are open to [the help of] private organizations.”

While Malabon is in the process of updating its plan, many LGUs still have unapproved schemes.

As of early November 2023, there were 352 local solid waste management plans still under evaluation, including plans for the highly urbanized cities of Cebu, Lucena, and Olongapo. The NSWMC has received 1,592 submissions from all the LGUs except for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, according to its dashboard.

Those under review, the COA said, were plans with missing data, especially on “budgetary requirements and specifics on proper final disposal facilities.”

State auditors said having only an annotated outline, and not a model SWM plan, from the NSWMC caused the delay in submission. They noted that the majority of the plans poured in 2014. Four years later, an executive committee in the commission was formed to fast-track the approval.

“Without a timely prepared and approved SWM Plan, the local governments lack a basis for planning their SWM activities and the required budget for implementation,” the COA said.

Few local governments want to foot the bill for greening waste management

Zero-waste advocate Aliño said stakeholders should focus on waste prevention as waste management is costly. (Read related story: Philippine towns, cities are paying high cost of waste management. Plastic producers should help) 

“Companies are being paid by the ton or the amount of waste that you bring to landfills,” Aliño said. “So mas marami akong dinadalang basura sa [The more wastes I bring to a] landfill or dumpsite, I get more money. And there’s no incentive for them to stop that process or that setup.” 

There are 55 cities dumping waste into Category 4 landfills but not all of them specified in their financial statements their allocations for “environment and sanitary services,” where expenses on garbage collection and disposal and other sanitation programs are lodged. 

According to PCIJ’s analysis of financial statements of these cities, the average cost per capita for environment and sanitary services was P480.26 in 2021 and P499.10 in 2022.

Tagaytay City in Cavite has the highest amount, allotting around P1,200 per person in 2021 and then nearly P1,400 the next year, while the cities of San Juan, Makati, and Pasay in Metro Manila, and Biñan in Laguna spent at least P1,000 per citizen.

Refuse from several poor towns and densely populated cities goes to Category 4 landfills as well. Palayan City in Nueva Ecija and 13 towns across Pangasinan, Tarlac, Benguet, Iloilo, Cebu, and Negros Oriental — which are at the lower income classes — share these landfills with big cities, especially highly urbanized cities with high waste generation.

Bury it? Burn it? Ban it? Imperfect solutions to a monumental problem 

For Tanchuling, the country needs to continuously monitor the impact of landfills and ensure well-designed facilities to handle waste, where only the materials that cannot be diverted end up. 

In the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2023-2028, the government is aiming to increase the proportion of LGUs served by landfills and MRFs. It did not mention waste diversion targets, while the previous administration’s PDP set an 80% goal by 2022.

But expanding landfill capacity is not the ultimate solution in addressing head-on the swelling volume of rubbish in the country. 

“Actually, we don’t want to continuously build landfills because it just means that our waste is also continuously increasing,” Tanchuling said. “In the hierarchy of solid waste management, disposal is the last priority, even before that you have waste-to-energy.”

Lao pointed to waste-to-energy schemes as a promising solution. He said the Philippine government is “seriously looking into and exploring waste-to-energy.” Malabon City CENRO chief Mesina also said that based on their discussions with the DENR, the technology must also be included in solid waste management plans. 

Waste-to-energy incineration, where waste is burned in power plants to produce electricity, faces strong opposition from groups, calling it a “false solution” and arguing it emits toxic pollutants. 

Experts also said incinerators need a huge volume of feedstock, thus the plants are mostly suitable for highly urbanized areas. 

RA No. 8749 or the “Clean Air Act of 1999” prohibits incineration, as stated in Section 20 of the law. However, the House of Representatives has passed a waste-to-energy bill, a priority of the Marcos administration, to repeal that provision.

For Aliño of Break Free From Plastic, managing biodegradables and food waste, which make up 52% of generated waste in the country, through composting can already help solve half of the waste problem. 

He said there must also be limited sorting in MRFs to minimize contamination of materials.

“It’s a good practice when you try to sort our waste because you also need to think of the welfare of the people handling it,” he said.

Aliño also encouraged LGUs to look into those that implemented ordinances to ban single-use plastic and ventured into reuse and refill initiatives, which some cities have rolled out through sari-sari stores.

“We’re looking at prevention, we’re looking at reuse,” he said. “If LGUs, the government invest in these, our waste problem would lessen because we are not creating more waste in the first place.”

For her part, Antones, a resident of Southville 6, a government relocation site near the closed SB Hain landfill in Barangay Kay-anlog, segregates their food scraps from their household waste. Sometimes, their family’s leftover food is given to the neighbor’s dog, she said.

During garbage collection day, the 36-year-old mother said she ties up their garbage bags when she places them along the main road, hoping to keep dogs from rummaging through the rubbish.

Aside from small acts, Antones said she also wants waste segregation strictly implemented in their barangay. “Madali naman po siguro pag meron lang nagpapaliwanag nang maayos (Waste management might be easy if explained properly),” she added. END

PCIJ editor-at-large Karol Ilagan supervised this reporting project supported by the Environmental Data Journalism Academy — a program of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network and Thibi.

Methodology: The author conducted data analysis and interviews to produce this report. Data on the country's landfills, which was as of June 2023, came from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Environmental Management Bureau. The bureau provided the data through an e-mail request. The bureau only acknowledged requests for more information on the spreadsheet. Waste projections and status data of solid waste management plans were scraped from online dashboards of the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC). The author also obtained data from online documents called “solid waste management profiles” of select local government units (LGUs) from the NSWMC. While it is still accessible, the link to these documents is not reflected in the current version of the commission's website. Financial statements for 2022 of LGUs were culled from the annual audit reports available on the Commission on Audit’s website. Statistics on population and poverty were from the Philippine Statistics Authority.

The author also used data analysis and other figures related to solid waste management from the COA's performance audit report on the implementation of Republic Act No. 9003.

Data analyses were done in Google Sheets which can be viewed through this link.

The author talked to some residents in Brgy. Kay-anlog, Calamba City, Laguna to better understand their situation living near a Category 4 landfill, which the EMB data showed as among with already exceeded capacities. The author also conducted an interview with the barangay chairperson, and reached out to the city government and private operator for their side. Insights from an expert, a city environment officer, a private sector representative, and an advocacy group representative were also used to write the story.