CEBU City Mayor Michael Rama has ordered all 80 barangays in the city to prepare for the total closure of the sanitary landfill in Barangay Inayawan next week.
Rama told barangay officials that there will be deliveries of trash inside the landfill's premises starting Jan. 15.
“This order is preparatory to the long-term goal of this administration to close down, rehabilitate, remediate and convert the area constituting the Inayawan Sanitary
Landfill into a productive, healthy, habitable and sustainable zone for economic development,” the mayor said in his one-page order dated Jan. 5.
Rama said that the move is in compliance with the provisions of Republic Act (RA) 9003, otherwise known as the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, as well as RA 9275 or the Philippine Clean Water Act of 2004.
The same order was issued by the mayor to all the City Hall offices and departments, City Environment and Natural Resources Office, the City Environmental Sanitation and Enforcement Team and the Cebu City Police Office.
Segregation
Following this, Rama asked the barangays and all government officials to practice segregation of solid wastes at their offices and homes.
He also urged them to strictly implement the anti-littering and the "no segregation, no collection" policy, with the assistance of the police, tanods and the barangay environment officers.
Rama directed the barangays to ensure that their material recovery facilities are fully operational to make sure that only residual wastes are delivered to the private sanitary landfill in Polog, Consolacion.
Once the Inayawan landfill will be closed, Solid Waste Management Board Chief Janesis Ponce said that City Hall will deploy five 10-wheeler trucks in the south district to haul garbage collected by the barangays.
Problem
Some barangay garbage trucks are unable to bring trash to Polog, a mountain barangay located about four kilometers away from Barangay Pit-os, Cebu City.
“We’ll deploy the trucks in the south because many barangays there have problematic garbage trucks. The north district is okay,” Ponce said.
Ponce said that the garbage dumped at the Inayawan landfill, which was completed in 1997 yet, will be mined.
These will then be processed by Mansei Recycle Systems Co. Ltd., a Japanese company.
Some 50 tons of waste a day will be converted to five tons of plastic fluff that can be converted to fuel, Ponce said.
Once all the garbage will be processed, he said that the City plans to undertake a mixed-use development in the 15.4-hectare area.