THE Davao City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro) said that the proposed ordinance of banning single use plastics in the city will ease up garbage collection.
Cenro officer-in-charge Marivic Reyes said that aside from the environmental benefits, the ordinance will make garbage collection time efficient.
"With the banning of single-use plastics, scavengers will no longer be going to the nearest collection points and collect garbage that can still be sold," Reyes said, admitting that picking up and segregating disarranged garbage sacks are one of the problems they are facing.
Although she does not have an exact figure as to how much volume of plastic will be reduced, she said that the city’s sanitary landfill will save a huge space.
Currently, the landfill located at New Carmen in Tugbok district is undergoing rehabilitation due to its critical stage.
According to her, Cenro has 15 garbage compactors that decrease wastes on landfills by crushing it into small and manageable pieces. However, four are currently under repair.
“Although I cannot give you the ideal number of compactors, we need more to cater more garbage in the future,” Reyes said.
The Carmen landfill has a 13.5-hectare lot size, with a cell size for compacted wastes of 4.32 hectares. It caters an average of 600-700 metric tons of garbage everyday.