If getting buried by a landslide isn’t the stuff of nightmares, imagine getting buried under tons of garbage.
That’s exactly what happened to residents of Binaliw, a mountain barangay in Cebu City, Thursday afternoon, Jan. 8, 2026. They happened to live next to the Prime Binaliw Landfill, which collapsed after continuous rainfall over the past several days softened the soil. The news report didn’t indicate how many houses were affected, but it said that many were struck by the garbage slide.
An even worse fate befell the facility’s employees, who were trapped when the structures inside the dumpsite collapsed. Rescue and retrieval operations were ongoing right after the incident. There was one confirmed fatality, and reports indicated that at least 38 landfill employees were still under the rubble. As for the affected residents, again, there are no confirmed numbers.
Critics of the landfill were probably having a schadenfreude moment, considering the facility has had its share of controversy over the past few years. Just last June, there were talks of shutting it down for good after its operator, Prime Integrated Waste Solutions Inc., was accused of failing to address long-standing concerns of neighboring communities — including foul odors, contaminated water and, you guessed it, structural instability.
Obviously, not all issues were resolved; otherwise, Thursday’s garbage slide wouldn’t have happened. At any rate, the incident puts more pressure on the Cebu City Government regarding where to dump the city’s trash, especially with the upcoming Sinulog festivities and the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected to flock to the city.
Let’s face it: tons and tons of waste will be generated in the days to come, and there will be no place to dump it. Mayor Nestor Archival could take a page from former First Lady Imelda Marcos’ book and erect a high wall to hide it from the public eye, but that would take time that the City doesn’t have and money that the City lacks. And what about the smell?
The last time I checked, the Binaliw landfill was the only place where the City dumps its garbage. So, what now? It has become apparent that given Cebu’s geography and the type of soil — primarily limestone-based and porous — open landfills like the one in Binaliw will always be ticking time bombs. Waste is bound to contaminate the groundwater and soil. Garbage slides will occur more often given the effects of climate change on Cebu’s weather. And because land is scarce, it will only be a matter of time before the city’s outskirts end up sitting next to a garbage dump.
I don’t understand why city officials are acting like there are no alternatives. There are, so why aren’t they considering them? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, remember the botched P5 billion waste-to-energy (WTE) project with New Sky Energy in Barangay Guba? It hasn’t been scrapped altogether, but the project has stalled since it was approved way back in 2022.
Last November, environmental advocates had a field day when news of the project’s reported withdrawal broke, calling it “a win for residents and public interest groups concerned about health and environmental risks.” One urged Cebu City to focus on sustainable solutions, such as waste segregation — which, by the way, the City said it would seriously implement — composting (difficult to do considering the lack of space), recycling (which many are actually doing) and enforcing the 2020 single-use plastic ban. Good luck with that.
Last October, I wrote about the environmental technology verification report on the New Sky WTE technology prepared by the Environmental Technology Verification Group, Cleaner Production Section, within the Environment & Biotechnological Division of the DOST’s Industrial Technology Development Institute.
Although the report was highly technical, its gist was that the technology basically passed with flying colors. In fact, it’s already in use in Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore. So why the continued opposition to a WTE facility, which is expected to process up to 800 tons of waste daily once completed?
In an earlier report, then-Councilor Archival questioned the feasibility and advantages of the project, “expressing doubts about its potential effectiveness and the clarity of its path forward.” Now that he is mayor, no doubt the project will continue to languish on the drawing board. Perhaps he is banking on the strict implementation of the “no segregation, no collection” policy to solve the city’s garbage woes. But I guess he never figured on the city’s only dumpsite crashing down during the opening salvo of the 461st Fiesta Señor.