By Benjamin Cuaresma
MANILA — The mountain of garbage choking the Redemptorist Water Channel in Parañaque is more than an ugly sight—it is a warning that the Philippines can no longer afford to treat its garbage problem as somebody else’s problem.
While DPWH personnel and heavy equipment were being deployed since Tuesday to dig, haul and dump mountains of trash clogging the waterway, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was delivering a bigger message: the garbage piling up across the country must be transformed from a public nuisance into a potential source of energy.
That is the logic behind the administration’s push for waste-to-energy facilities—a strategy that seeks to process garbage and convert its usable energy content into electricity while reducing the volume of waste that ends up in landfills, rivers and drainage systems.
And the timing could not be more telling.
In Parañaque, DPWH Secretary Vince Dizon found a water channel so overwhelmed by garbage that the government had to send two backhoes, a backhoe loader, five dump trucks and 50 personnel just to restore the waterway’s flow.
Dizon called it what it is: a garbage crisis.
But the Parañaque mess also exposes the failure of simply collecting garbage, transporting it somewhere else and hoping the problem disappears.
It doesn’t.
Garbage comes back—in waterways, canals, esteros, drainage systems and communities.
And when the rains come, the trash becomes a flood weapon.
President Marcos has now put forward a different proposition: if the country is producing enormous quantities of garbage every day, why not turn a portion of that waste into something useful—electricity?
That idea deserves serious attention, provided it is implemented with strict environmental safeguards, modern technology and transparent regulation.
The Philippines does not have the luxury of endlessly expanding dumpsites while waterways become unofficial garbage disposal areas.
Nor can government keep spending public money clearing the same waterways over and over again without attacking the source of the problem.
The images from Baclaran tell the story.
Every sack, plastic container, discarded material and other waste pulled from the channel represents garbage that should never have reached the waterway in the first place.
And every truckload hauled away represents another reminder that flood control begins long before the rain falls.
It begins with proper waste management.
This is where the Marcos waste-to-energy proposal could become more than an energy project.
Done properly, it could become part of the country’s flood-control strategy.
Less garbage dumped into waterways means less obstruction.
Less obstruction means better water flow.
Better water flow means waterways can perform the job they were built to do.
And properly processed waste could simultaneously contribute to electricity generation.
But government must be careful not to sell waste-to-energy as a magic solution.
It cannot excuse irresponsible disposal.
It cannot replace recycling and waste segregation.
And it must never become a justification for burning garbage indiscriminately.
The real solution requires an integrated system—from segregation and collection to recycling, recovery, treatment and, where appropriate, energy generation.
The President has identified the problem.
The DPWH has shown the consequences.
Now the government must prove that it can turn the idea into a working national system.
Because the garbage choking Parañaque’s waterways is not merely waste.
It is a symbol of a country that has been throwing away both its environmental future and a potentially valuable energy resource.
The challenge before Marcos is straightforward:
Stop treating garbage as something to hide—and start treating it as something that can be managed, recovered and, where safely possible, converted into power.
From floodwater to electricity, the Philippines needs to make sure its garbage crisis finally becomes a national solution—not another recurring national disaster.
ia/xf
