MANILA – Burdened by discarded face masks, plastic bottles and various refuse during the COVID-19 crisis, a modest riverside community in Manila established its own waste management service, providing its employees, predominantly women, a chance to enhance their livelihoods.
The Tagumpay 83Zero Waste Association’s network of street cleaners, drivers, and creek monitors purify waterways and gather recyclable materials from the community’s 5,700 residents as well as 24 surrounding villages and five educational institutions.
Additionally, they operate a junk shop where they generate income by selling collected waste, such as single-use plastic bottles and rigid plastics, to recycling centers.
“Apart from decreasing plastic waste in our community, we also assist our members in earning extra income for their households,” Catherine Gabriel, leader of the association of informal waste collectors in the district of Barangay 830, informed the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
This organization is one of two community groups in Manila selected by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, or UN-Habitat, to receive training on waste management and resources to expand their operations.
Numerous neighborhoods grapple with the challenge of collecting and repurposing waste in a nation that allocates inadequate resources to confront the extensive garbage it generates each year.
The Philippines ranks among the leading waste producers in Southeast Asia, with 18.05 million tons of refuse in 2020, projected to escalate to 23.61 million tons by 2025, according to the National Solid Waste Management Commission.
Local governments in villages and barangays, or neighborhoods, are responsible for waste disposal yet often lack the funding, skilled workforce, and infrastructure to facilitate such initiatives.
Community organizations frequently fill the void, though their workers earn minimal wages and lack job security.
The waste association of Barangay 830 commenced without financial backing but has subsequently acquired millions of pesos from nongovernmental organizations, as well as UN-Habitat, for equipment purchases and facility management.
“If we solely relied on the association’s revenue, we would not be able to procure delivery vehicles or establish an office to sustain our system,” noted Gabriel.
The Philippines observes Zero Waste Month this January to advocate for sustainable production and consumption practices, as part of its goal to keep industrial and post-consumer packaging waste out of the environment by 2030.
A government poster for the initiative promotes its theme of “integrating sustainability and circularity into the informal waste sector.”
It remains uncertain, however, how informal waste workers, the backbone of the nation’s current recycling initiatives, will feature in this transition.
WASTE MANAGEMENT DEFICIENCIES
The Philippines mandates 42,000 barangays and villages to establish their own materials recovery facilities and implement door-to-door collection of segregated waste.
Nevertheless, only 39% of villages possess such facilities, as reported by the Commission on Audit.
The responsibility of managing local waste is often assigned to over 100,000 informal waste workers in the nation, some of whom earn under a dollar each day.
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has stated a desire to enhance protections for waste collectors rights and aims to “transform the collection and sorting facilities into formal activities and establishments.”
In Dumaguete, a city on Negros Island in southern Philippines, Aloja Santos and other waste pickers were trained in 2018 by the Mother Earth Foundation, an NGO striving to minimize waste and pollution.
The premise was that after a year of NGO support, the local government would adopt the practices.
“But the barangay could not bear our expenses. Thus, we provide our own sacks, gloves, boots and additional materials. We utilize only bicycles to gather heavy waste from households,” explained Santos.
Santos and other female waste workers formed a collective that serves 400 households daily to collect and categorize biodegradable and plastic waste, often without adequate protective gear.
The group charges each household 50 pesos, or less than a dollar, per month.
Given their operations are independent from local authorities, the workers must pay the government 3 pesos for each sack of waste. Philippine law prohibits the “unauthorized removal of recyclable material” designated for formal collection.
“We contribute to the solution in mitigating plastic waste in landfills, but we seek appropriate remuneration. We are literally performing the dirty work for manufacturers, and we wish to be involved in discussions on improving waste management,” stated Santos, a champion for workers’ rights.
She mentioned that informal waste workers were excluded from consultations regarding the Philippines’ extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws. In 2022, the government enacted a law holding plastic packaging producers and brands financially liable for the collection and recycling of their products.
“For example, we lack information on the true value of our collected waste that is being sold to plastic credit markets,” she remarked.
WORKERS’ RIGHTS
Resourceful informal waste workers offer an affordable solution for communities in the Philippines struggling with basic waste segregation, studies indicate.
However, they face health and safety risks.
In February, a coalition of 12 waste worker organizations representing over 1,000 members formed a nationwide alliance advocating for legal protections.
The Philippine National Waste Workers Alliance, led by Santos, is demanding labor protections such as hazard wages, health coverage, and job security, alongside training and involvement in policymaking.
Last April, a senator introduced the Magna Carta for Waste Workers bill, which encompasses demands from informal waste workers.
Environmental advocates are calling for a global agreement to minimize plastic and have urged that informal workers be included in the framework. However, a U.N.-backed effort to create such an agreement late last year fell short.
The delay in formulating the treaty means waste workers continue to remain unprotected, laboring in perilous conditions and at risk from toxic fumes emitted from burning plastics, stated Marian Ledesma, zero waste campaigner for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.
“Waste workers are frequently marginalized and overlooked by society,” remarked Ledesma.
“We must guarantee that they have a voice in planning and execution, and that they have access to decent employment opportunities as we put an end to the era of plastic.” – Thomson Reuters Foundation