Green groups hit waste incineration

MANILA, Philippines - Environmental groups hit the National Solid Waste Management Commission for crafting the waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration guidelines, which they claimed violate Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.

The Philippine Earth Justice Center (PEJC) and the EcoWaste Coalition said NSWMC was quick to formulate its proposed guidelines governing WTE incineration technologies even while RA 9003, whose implementation the commission is supposed to oversee, calls for the adoption of “best environmental practice(s) in ecological waste management excluding incineration.”

PEJC maintained that “WTE runs contrary to the essential ecological and ‘hierarchical’ waste management principles such as source reduction and minimization, resource recovery, recycling and reuse of wastes.”

“WTE encourages mixing of wastes, in clear violation of RA 9003,” PEJC co-founder Gloria Estenzo-Ramos said.

EcoWaste national coordinator Aileen Lucero said if garbage is dealt with according to law, only two to four percent of it would be available for incineration, “making the whole thing economically unviable and simply nonsensical.”

She added that the incineration process emits hazardous substances, violating the Clean Air Act of 1999, which the Department of Environment and Natural Resources – which chairs the NSWMC – is also supposed to enforce.

Estenzo-Ramos called on the panel to focus on its “mandate to come up with and promulgate the list of non-environmentally acceptable products; which, once done, would eliminate much of our garbage woes.”

EcoWaste and PEJC clarified that they are not against WTE itself, but only against WTEs that employ incineration.