Let’s be honest: Davao City has a trash problem. With nearly 800 tons of garbage piling up everyday and our only landfill bursting at the seams, it’s easy to panic. And when people panic, they look for quick, flashy solutions.
Enter the Waste-to-Energy (WTE) incinerator. A P5-billion magic machine that promises to make our garbage disappear while producing electricity. Sounds like a superhero, right? Not really.
WTE is a linear process of destruction. It is the opposite of circular. A truly circular economy follows a clear “waste hierarchy” — preventing waste in the first place is the best option, followed by reusing and recycling materials. Incineration, even with energy recovery, sits near the very bottom, only one step above simply burying waste in a landfill.
WTE is not compatible with a circular system because of these fundamental conflicts:
It destroys value instead of keeping it in the loop. Incineration deliberately destroys materials that could otherwise be recycled or composted. One expert on the topic put it simply: “Waste incineration is not a renewable source of energy…that burns waste made from virgin resources, mostly crude oil.” So it is essentially a linear “take-make-dispose” process with a power plant attached.
It competes with recycling instead of supporting it. WTE incinerator needs a large, steady stream of waste to burn in order to be financially viable, creating a “perverse incentive” to maintain high waste volumes rather than reduce them.
If a city has both a WTE facility and a recycling program, they directly compete for the same materials like plastic or paper. A report on WTE limitations notes that the presence of this infrastructure can inadvertently create a “disincentive for waste reduction.”
WTE does not fully solve the landfill problem but creates new ones. While it may reduce waste, it does not eliminate them. The process generates significant amounts of toxic ash that still ends up in landfills. A senior European Parliament official described WTE as “A waste management system that transforms a lot of our waste but not into something we can use again; it transforms it into toxic ash.”
A circular economy sees waste as a design flaw, pushing us to question why we created something that cannot be reused or recycled. A WTE facility accepts waste as fuel and profits from its destruction, moving us away from that ultimate goal.
Environmental groups like the EcoWaste Coalition and Interfacing Development Interventions for Sustainability (IDIS) have been shouting this from the rooftops: incineration is the enemy of a circular economy.
Aside from it is bad for sustainability, it is also bad for our health. Studies have linked living near incinerators to higher rates of cancer and birth defects.
Then there’s the money. A P5-billion plant costs a lot more than investing in actual zero-waste solutions. History is full of WTE disasters. There’s the Brightmark plant in the United States that cost $260 million and operated at only 5 percent capacity before going bankrupt. And the Abellon plant in India, which collapsed under a mountain of debt. Do we really want Davao to be the next cautionary tale?
So if we don’t burn our trash, what do we do? The answer is actually more fun, cheaper, and creates jobs. It is called a circular system and it works.
Let’s start with the easiest win — our food waste. Did you know that over 40 percent of Davao’s garbage is kitchen scraps and spoiled fruit and vegetables? That is not trash. That is future compost. Barangay Potrero in Malabon City processes 500 kilos of waste daily and turns 75 percent of it into compost that sell for P15 a kilo. They use the money for community projects. Imagine every barangay in Davao doing that. We would have the healthiest gardens in Mindanao.
Actually, we already have another Japanese technology doing this at Davao Thermo Biotech Corporation (DTBC) founded by the late Dr. Bo Puentespina and now being run by his wife, Olive, the cheesemaker behind our world famous Malagos Farmhouse cheeses. The core of DTBC’s operation is a Japanese-patented technology that accelerates the natural decomposition process in a completely chemical-free and incredibly efficient way called hyper-thermophilic aerobic composting.
DTBC serves major fast food chains, food manufacturers and poultry farms in Davao. It has diverted over 34 million kilograms of biodegradable waste from landfills since operations began in 2017. It is capable of handling up to 50 tons of biodegradable waste daily. And it is the first and only company in the Philippines to use this Japanese technology.
As an alternative to WTE incinerator, I think it is a wiser investment for the city to build this kind of plant instead. DTBC proves that by choosing to feed our soil instead of feeding fire, we can build a healthier, more sustainable city.
Aside from composting our food waste, we need to take recycling more seriously here in Davao. San Fernando, Pampanga diverts over 85 percent of its waste from landfills simply by enforcing the law we already have — RA 9003. Every barangay has a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), and the residents actually segregate. It is not magic. It is just commitment. Siquijor province has 89 barangays with working MRFs. They banned single-use plastics early and stuck with it. And tourists love them for it.
If we want to get really fancy, we can look at Capannori, Italy. They introduced a “Pay-As-You-Throw” system where families pay less for garbage collection if they produce less trash. They cut residual waste by 57 percent.
We do not need a P5-billion incinerator. We can start solving our trash problem now.
First, fully enforce waste segregation. No more excuses. Second, give every barangay a functional MRF — not for show, but for real. Third, launch a city-wide composting program. Turn those kangkong stems and banana peels into black gold for local farms. Fourth, formalize our informal waste pickers. They are already the unsung heroes of recycling. Pay them fairly and give them safe working conditions.
Finally, let’s stop thinking of waste as a problem to burn and start seeing it as a resource to manage. A circular Davao is possible. It’s cleaner, cheaper, and kinder to our lungs and our future.
Disciplined Davaoeños segregate their waste, recycle and reuse materials, refuse single-use plastics, compost their food and other biodegradable waste, and will not waste money on toxic incineration. Until we learn how to do this as a community, we cannot call ourselves disciplined and environment-friendly citizens.
