When it comes to solid waste management, taking into account strong social factors is very important, especially in countries like the Philippines, where waste management is entangled with issues such as informal workers, waste-pickers, and massive plastic sachet consumption.
Professor Maria Antonia N Tanchuling, of the Institute of Civil Engineering at the University of the Philippines in Manila, has done a great deal of research on plastic waste management. She has a PhD in Civil Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (2005); a Master's of Science in Environmental Engineering from the University of the Philippines Diliman (1998); and a Bachelor's of Science in Civil Engineering, also from the University of the Philippines Diliman (1988).
Our team recently had the opportunity to talk with Professor Tanchuling on topics such as the importance of data availability and where the funding should go for the sustainability of plastic waste management.
The Centre: What first drew you to the study of plastic waste management?
I wrote my dissertation on contaminants transported underneath the landfill clay liners, which led me to study the biggest dumpsite in the Philippines at that time, the Payatas in Metro Manila. I found that to fully understand what goes into the dumpsite, especially with the landfill liners or the contaminant transport, I looked at the upstream side, so that is how I got interested in solid waste management.
A report written by Jenna Jambeck (in 2015) citedthe Philippines as the third largest contributor of plastics to the oceans. Because of that, a lot of funds were allocated for it (along with) a lot of pressure to work on the issue. They looked for a representative from the Philippines to be trained on microplastics, and I was nominated. This was the first time I learned about microplastics. From that training, I started doing research on microplastics because no one at that time that I knew of was doing anything about microplastics in the Philippines.
A lot of items collected in the rivers are plastic bags, the single-use carrier bags that are given in grocery stores, we have a lot of those. A lot of sachets too. Sachets are something that you would expect from a developing country because that’s what is affordable, but even compared to other developing countries, we have more consumption of sachets. Everything comes in sachets, like shampoo, cooking oil, soy sauce. When we did a survey, we were surprised that people buy cooking oil by sachet. But that gives you an idea of the very low purchasing power of the people.
We also have PET bottles. Although in terms of the plastics that are being recycled, it is only the rigid plastics – the PET bottles and the high-density polyethylene – but there is really not enough recycling infrastructure so you can still find these valuable rigid plastics in rivers, in bodies of water.
There is only one river mouth in which we sampled primary microplastics, in the form of beads, and that is where the plastic manufacturers are. But the most common in almost all the rivers that we surveyed are fragments of bigger plastic items, especially shopping bags. You can also observe filaments, or like fibre lines, which we assume to be coming from laundry wastewater, through sewage.
We have also made studies on microplastics from sewage treatment plants, and we see a lot of these microplastics in the shape of fibres. In areas where there is fishing, we also see this fibre shape coming from fishing nets.
We see a lot of the fragments, which come from the macroplastics in the river. There is a problem with waste management because waste is directly dumped into the river. As time goes by, plastic items get fragmented slowly by UV radiation, mechanical abrasion, and other natural processes.
Some can also come from our laundry wastewater. We understand from sewage treatment plant studies that the conventional treatment system, like activated sludge, can remove around 85% of the microplastics. But you still have 15% that is left untreated, and a large portion of the population is not served by a sewage treatment plant. If you discharge your sewage directly, you can still have those (plastic) fibres. I think that’s the main source.
The beads, the primary microplastics found in rivers, are a much smaller proportion. But that can come from leakage from plastic factories, or cosmetics items such as facial wash. But we did not see a lot of them in sewage treatment plants – minimal compared to secondary microplastics. I would say the main cause is the poor waste management of solid waste.
Both of them are hazardous, but I think microplastics are more problematic because the smaller organisms can ingest them, and they are able to enter the food chain until humans can consume them. While the bigger plastics can kill the animals because they mistake it for food, leaving the animals malnourished. So both (plastic types) are harmful in that sense.
No, because visually I can see how much plastics are in the river, so it was not very surprising to see the results. What surprised me more was the lack of waste management capacity of the local government, simple things like the lack of data.
We look at the waste management systems of local government units, using the tools developed by UN-Habitat and the University of Leeds. We have been really advocating for the local government units to quantify and establish a clear picture of the value chain of their waste. How much waste is being generated, how much waste is being disposed, and how much waste is being recycled? So even those, the quality, the level of data collection is very poor.
They don’t (even) have weighing scales at many disposal sites. They just estimate (the quantity) by the number of trucks, and make assumptions on the density. Some are overloaded, some are under-loaded. We try to digitalise waste leakage data and manage it through a computer system. Currently, leakage data is not digitalised and reported. This is the reason recycling rates can also be erroneous and overestimated.
As long as the data is not digitally managed, we really cannot solve the problem of waste leakage. We blame the people for not being disciplined, and for throwing garbage in the river. But in many places, people keep on throwing because they do not have adequate infrastructure for waste collection.
Why is there no adequate waste collection infrastructure?
In many areas of the country, there is no collection of waste, they just leave it up to the barangays (villages), to the local government units. But the local government units are also not well-capacitated. So the problem is really in the infrastructure of waste management.
We really cannot improve if we do not admit that something is wrong with the waste management infrastructure itself. So, to tackle the source of the problem, we need to work on the policy, by preparing all this data and advocating for a good information system that is publicly available to make data transparent. I think you are all familiar with how corrupt our government can be. And one way of tackling corruption is by making data transparent. That is why a lot of corrupt politicians do not like this.
I do not think there is enough funding given. There are no fees for waste management. The waste management system is heavily funded by the government, and there is no participation from the private sector, except if you are a commercial establishment. There are not enough funds to sustainably operate solid waste management systems.
So that is one of the reasons why we are also pushing for more funds to be used for collection and recycling of plastics. We just passed the Extended Producers Responsibility Law in July 2022, and the IRR, the implementing rules and regulations, is now being prepared.
The multinationals, the bigger companies are interested, and, in a way, they are more advanced. They have started to manage waste on their own. The bigger companies are interested because they are driven by their mother companies. They have these commitments to sustainability, and that also makes good business sense.
Yes, I would say regulation-wise it is adequate. But the problem is the enforcement of the law. How do we really improve enforcement?
Yes, they are. Environmental education is included in the curriculum at all levels, from primary, high school, and tertiary levels. But it is not enough to keep on educating our population if the infrastructure is not present. For example, if you ask people why they do not segregate their waste, they would say that they see the garbage collectors mixing them anyway. But the garbage collectors mix them because the segregated waste have no designated places to go. We do not have the facilities.
That is why I say the infrastructure is lacking. Even for the high-value plastics, it is only in the highly urbanised cities that you find collection centres. The Philippines is an archipelago, so you can imagine how it is on the islands.
According to our estimation, only 9% of post-consumer plastic waste gets recycled locally. First, there are not a lot of recycling plants. What we have are collection points or junk shops. We have the waste-pickers who go from house to house, collecting your waste, and then it goes to a junk shop, and then the junk shops sell it to consolidators. Those consolidators are just physically consolidating plastic waste materials, or compress them into compact and tight bales. The recyclers melt them and make them into recycled plastic products, but most of the plastics get pelletised and sent mostly to China. These recyclers also get the imported waste plastic.
I do not have the numbers regarding the participation of women in the research field, but I do not see any gaps. Maybe that is only specific to the Philippines, because, for example, in the UP Institute of Engineering, half of the population is female. Compared to other countries, we have more women participation, and we do not see a lot of bias or prejudice against women. In the field of environmental engineering, relatively, you see a lot of women researchers, and if you go to construction engineering, or civil engineering, geo-technical engineering, those are more or less male-dominated fields.
Within the plastic waste management sphere, I know empirically that many women work as informal waste collectors in the informal economy. Also, on small community-based efforts to recycle waste, you see a strong female representation.
Yes, because when they are childbearing, they can be impacted more health-wise, and, of course, all the other associated problems regarding women, like having double tasks – when they go home they also do the house chores.
It is good to be able to clean up the ocean, but I do not think it is sustainable. We cannot keep on doing it forever. There should come a point where we should stop the source upstream.
It is not only in South Korea. There are so many proposals that are coming into wanting to clean up the plastics that are out there. Maybe it’s a solution now, but we should do something really upstream, starting from how to reduce the amount of plastics being generated, and again, the infrastructure for waste management. I think these are sustainable solutions.
I always say that regarding the data, we should have policies that are based on evidence. It should be evidence-based, it is data-driven. And then next, we should really improve our waste management infrastructure – just simply improving collection coverage will decrease the amount of leakage of plastics into the environment.
I think if citizens are more vigilant, they can also demand more, especially from their local executives. Many local executives, especially the young ones, are also open. So, we should also start working with them. But to be vigilant, the citizens also need the data, they need the information.
Even with my students, I ask them, ‘Do you know where your waste goes to?’ Not a lot of people know. Same with wastewater – I think wastewater is even more difficult. ‘When you flush the toilet, do you know where your wastewater goes?’ From the side of being an academic, our contribution is to ensure that we build on the data we share. And what you (the Centre) are doing is good. What we (researchers) do, the general public should know and understand, and appreciate.
Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering, the University of the Philippines
When it comes to solid waste management, taking into account strong social factors is very important, especially in countries like the Philippines, where waste management is entangled with issues such as informal workers, waste-pickers, and massive plastic sachet consumption.
Professor Maria Antonia N Tanchuling, of the Institute of Civil Engineering at the University of the Philippines in Manila, has done a great deal of research on plastic waste management. She has a PhD in Civil Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (2005); a Master's of Science in Environmental Engineering from the University of the Philippines Diliman (1998); and a Bachelor's of Science in Civil Engineering, also from the University of the Philippines Diliman (1988).
Our team recently had the opportunity to talk with Professor Tanchuling on topics such as the importance of data availability and where the funding should go for the sustainability of plastic waste management.
The Centre: What first drew you to the study of plastic waste management?
I wrote my dissertation on contaminants transported underneath the landfill clay liners, which led me to study the biggest dumpsite in the Philippines at that time, the Payatas in Metro Manila. I found that to fully understand what goes into the dumpsite, especially with the landfill liners or the contaminant transport, I looked at the upstream side, so that is how I got interested in solid waste management.
A report written by Jenna Jambeck (in 2015) citedthe Philippines as the third largest contributor of plastics to the oceans. Because of that, a lot of funds were allocated for it (along with) a lot of pressure to work on the issue. They looked for a representative from the Philippines to be trained on microplastics, and I was nominated. This was the first time I learned about microplastics. From that training, I started doing research on microplastics because no one at that time that I knew of was doing anything about microplastics in the Philippines.
A lot of items collected in the rivers are plastic bags, the single-use carrier bags that are given in grocery stores, we have a lot of those. A lot of sachets too. Sachets are something that you would expect from a developing country because that’s what is affordable, but even compared to other developing countries, we have more consumption of sachets. Everything comes in sachets, like shampoo, cooking oil, soy sauce. When we did a survey, we were surprised that people buy cooking oil by sachet. But that gives you an idea of the very low purchasing power of the people.
We also have PET bottles. Although in terms of the plastics that are being recycled, it is only the rigid plastics – the PET bottles and the high-density polyethylene – but there is really not enough recycling infrastructure so you can still find these valuable rigid plastics in rivers, in bodies of water.
There is only one river mouth in which we sampled primary microplastics, in the form of beads, and that is where the plastic manufacturers are. But the most common in almost all the rivers that we surveyed are fragments of bigger plastic items, especially shopping bags. You can also observe filaments, or like fibre lines, which we assume to be coming from laundry wastewater, through sewage.
We have also made studies on microplastics from sewage treatment plants, and we see a lot of these microplastics in the shape of fibres. In areas where there is fishing, we also see this fibre shape coming from fishing nets.
We see a lot of the fragments, which come from the macroplastics in the river. There is a problem with waste management because waste is directly dumped into the river. As time goes by, plastic items get fragmented slowly by UV radiation, mechanical abrasion, and other natural processes.
Some can also come from our laundry wastewater. We understand from sewage treatment plant studies that the conventional treatment system, like activated sludge, can remove around 85% of the microplastics. But you still have 15% that is left untreated, and a large portion of the population is not served by a sewage treatment plant. If you discharge your sewage directly, you can still have those (plastic) fibres. I think that’s the main source.
The beads, the primary microplastics found in rivers, are a much smaller proportion. But that can come from leakage from plastic factories, or cosmetics items such as facial wash. But we did not see a lot of them in sewage treatment plants – minimal compared to secondary microplastics. I would say the main cause is the poor waste management of solid waste.
Both of them are hazardous, but I think microplastics are more problematic because the smaller organisms can ingest them, and they are able to enter the food chain until humans can consume them. While the bigger plastics can kill the animals because they mistake it for food, leaving the animals malnourished. So both (plastic types) are harmful in that sense.
No, because visually I can see how much plastics are in the river, so it was not very surprising to see the results. What surprised me more was the lack of waste management capacity of the local government, simple things like the lack of data.
We look at the waste management systems of local government units, using the tools developed by UN-Habitat and the University of Leeds. We have been really advocating for the local government units to quantify and establish a clear picture of the value chain of their waste. How much waste is being generated, how much waste is being disposed, and how much waste is being recycled? So even those, the quality, the level of data collection is very poor.
They don’t (even) have weighing scales at many disposal sites. They just estimate (the quantity) by the number of trucks, and make assumptions on the density. Some are overloaded, some are under-loaded. We try to digitalise waste leakage data and manage it through a computer system. Currently, leakage data is not digitalised and reported. This is the reason recycling rates can also be erroneous and overestimated.
As long as the data is not digitally managed, we really cannot solve the problem of waste leakage. We blame the people for not being disciplined, and for throwing garbage in the river. But in many places, people keep on throwing because they do not have adequate infrastructure for waste collection.
Why is there no adequate waste collection infrastructure?
In many areas of the country, there is no collection of waste, they just leave it up to the barangays (villages), to the local government units. But the local government units are also not well-capacitated. So the problem is really in the infrastructure of waste management.
We really cannot improve if we do not admit that something is wrong with the waste management infrastructure itself. So, to tackle the source of the problem, we need to work on the policy, by preparing all this data and advocating for a good information system that is publicly available to make data transparent. I think you are all familiar with how corrupt our government can be. And one way of tackling corruption is by making data transparent. That is why a lot of corrupt politicians do not like this.
I do not think there is enough funding given. There are no fees for waste management. The waste management system is heavily funded by the government, and there is no participation from the private sector, except if you are a commercial establishment. There are not enough funds to sustainably operate solid waste management systems.
So that is one of the reasons why we are also pushing for more funds to be used for collection and recycling of plastics. We just passed the Extended Producers Responsibility Law in July 2022, and the IRR, the implementing rules and regulations, is now being prepared.
The multinationals, the bigger companies are interested, and, in a way, they are more advanced. They have started to manage waste on their own. The bigger companies are interested because they are driven by their mother companies. They have these commitments to sustainability, and that also makes good business sense.
Yes, I would say regulation-wise it is adequate. But the problem is the enforcement of the law. How do we really improve enforcement?
Yes, they are. Environmental education is included in the curriculum at all levels, from primary, high school, and tertiary levels. But it is not enough to keep on educating our population if the infrastructure is not present. For example, if you ask people why they do not segregate their waste, they would say that they see the garbage collectors mixing them anyway. But the garbage collectors mix them because the segregated waste have no designated places to go. We do not have the facilities.
That is why I say the infrastructure is lacking. Even for the high-value plastics, it is only in the highly urbanised cities that you find collection centres. The Philippines is an archipelago, so you can imagine how it is on the islands.
According to our estimation, only 9% of post-consumer plastic waste gets recycled locally. First, there are not a lot of recycling plants. What we have are collection points or junk shops. We have the waste-pickers who go from house to house, collecting your waste, and then it goes to a junk shop, and then the junk shops sell it to consolidators. Those consolidators are just physically consolidating plastic waste materials, or compress them into compact and tight bales. The recyclers melt them and make them into recycled plastic products, but most of the plastics get pelletised and sent mostly to China. These recyclers also get the imported waste plastic.
I do not have the numbers regarding the participation of women in the research field, but I do not see any gaps. Maybe that is only specific to the Philippines, because, for example, in the UP Institute of Engineering, half of the population is female. Compared to other countries, we have more women participation, and we do not see a lot of bias or prejudice against women. In the field of environmental engineering, relatively, you see a lot of women researchers, and if you go to construction engineering, or civil engineering, geo-technical engineering, those are more or less male-dominated fields.
Within the plastic waste management sphere, I know empirically that many women work as informal waste collectors in the informal economy. Also, on small community-based efforts to recycle waste, you see a strong female representation.
Yes, because when they are childbearing, they can be impacted more health-wise, and, of course, all the other associated problems regarding women, like having double tasks – when they go home they also do the house chores.
It is good to be able to clean up the ocean, but I do not think it is sustainable. We cannot keep on doing it forever. There should come a point where we should stop the source upstream.
It is not only in South Korea. There are so many proposals that are coming into wanting to clean up the plastics that are out there. Maybe it’s a solution now, but we should do something really upstream, starting from how to reduce the amount of plastics being generated, and again, the infrastructure for waste management. I think these are sustainable solutions.
I always say that regarding the data, we should have policies that are based on evidence. It should be evidence-based, it is data-driven. And then next, we should really improve our waste management infrastructure – just simply improving collection coverage will decrease the amount of leakage of plastics into the environment.
I think if citizens are more vigilant, they can also demand more, especially from their local executives. Many local executives, especially the young ones, are also open. So, we should also start working with them. But to be vigilant, the citizens also need the data, they need the information.
Even with my students, I ask them, ‘Do you know where your waste goes to?’ Not a lot of people know. Same with wastewater – I think wastewater is even more difficult. ‘When you flush the toilet, do you know where your wastewater goes?’ From the side of being an academic, our contribution is to ensure that we build on the data we share. And what you (the Centre) are doing is good. What we (researchers) do, the general public should know and understand, and appreciate.
Professor at the Institute of Civil Engineering, the University of the Philippines
17 February 2024
