THE National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) has approved the 10-year solid waste management plan of Cagayan de Oro City.
Clenro chief Engineer Armen Cuenca said out of 20 local government units in Northern Mindanao, only 2 were approved, which include a town in Bukidnon and Cagayan de Oro. The Clenro team has defended its solid waste management plan before a panel of the NSWMC in Davao City last November 22.
Cuenca said part of the solid waste plan is to hit the target which entails that there should only be about 15 percent of garbage will be dumped at the sanitary landfill.
"They checked if our sanitary landfill is functional and if a centralized material recovery facility is already in place. We also presented that by 2019, we will start implementing the single-use plastic regulation," he added.
With the NSWMC's approval, Cuenca believes that more international organizations or even government agencies will be attracted and help the city in its efforts to reduce waste.
Aside from implementing the single-use plastic, the city is also working to rehabilitate the former dumpsite in Zayas, barangay Carmen, and turn it into an ecopark.
It can be recalled that city officials were called out by the Environment Ombudsman Program in Mindanao in 2016 for failing to close the illegal dumpsite.
In 2017, the city finally closed the dumpsite and opened the engineered sanitary landfill in Barangay Pagalungan.