Starting July 26, Cebu City will close its South Road Properties waste transfer site and transition to a system where trucks collect garbage nightly from urban barangay staging areas.
The shift follows a deadly January 8 landslide at the Binaliw landfill and a June 7 Environmental Management Bureau cease-and-desist order against the city's temporary, non-compliant SRP operations.
Hauling the trash 61 kilometers to an Aloguinsan landfill costs P6,000 per ton, doubling the city’s annual waste management budget from P500 million to nearly P1 billion.
CEBU City is facing a major change in how it handles its daily trash. Starting July 26, the city will completely shut down its primary garbage transfer operations at the South Road Properties (SRP) and transition to a neighborhood overnight collection system.
The current crisis stems from a series of events that began on January 8, when a massive landslide at the Prime Integrated Waste Solutions (PWS) landfill in Barangay Binaliw killed 36 people. The tragedy forced the immediate closure of the city's main waste facility.
To handle the trash, City Hall moved daily waste to a temporary coastal staging area at the SRP.
However, the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB 7) found the city was operating without a required Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) or basic containment measures.
On June 7, the EMB issued a formal cease-and-desist order. City officials continued using the SRP site for weeks, citing a lack of options. Viral online videos showing contracted trucks unloading exposed garbage eventually forced city leaders to acknowledge negligence and accelerate plans to close the site.
Under the new plan, household waste will now sit at designated barangay staging areas each night. Contracted private hauler Pinoy Basurero will deploy roughly 50 heavy trucks into participating urban barangays every evening around 10 p.m.
Barangays will collect household trash during the day using local vehicles and move it to temporary neighborhood sites. Overnight crews will then load the stacked garbage onto long-haul trucks bound for a landfill in Aloguinsan, located more than 60 kilometers away. City officials are instructing local leaders to enforce strict bagging rules to prevent liquid runoff and spills.
However, the emergency plan excludes 30 mountain barangays. City leaders are urging residents in those areas to handle organic waste through home composting while a separate mountain collection network is built.
Hauling waste 61 kilometers away to Aloguinsan comes with a heavy price tag. Long-distance trucking costs approximately P6,000 per ton.
With each fully loaded 20-ton haul costing roughly P120,000 per trip, Cebu City’s total waste management expenses for the year are projected to double—rising from an original budget of P500 million to nearly P1 billion.
This spending spike severely limits funds that could otherwise go toward flood control and public services. City officials acknowledge that this long-haul model is fiscally unsustainable and can only serve as a temporary bridge while secondary disposal cells at the Binaliw site are rebuilt.
City leadership maintains that waste segregation is the only way to reduce daily tonnage and limit transport costs.
"Atong gihangyo si Pinoy Basurero nga instead moadto mo sa atong SRP, moadto mo kada barangay," Mayor Nestor Archival stated during a briefing with 80 barangay captains.
(We asked Pinoy Basurero that instead of going to the SRP, they should go to each barangay.)
Addressing the illegal operations at the SRP, Archival noted the public fallout. "What appeared was we were being negligent," he acknowledged. To encourage compliance, the city is offering fuel allowances to barangays that successfully segregate biodegradable and recyclable materials before pickup.
Despite these incentives, environmental advocates and urban planners warn that storing thousands of tons of mixed garbage in densely populated neighborhoods creates health hazards. With heavy monsoon rains falling across Metro Cebu, uncollected waste stored in cramped barangay sites could block drainage channels, worsen flash flooding, and spread diseases.
The success of this emergency system depends on whether individual barangays have the physical space, equipment, and capacity to handle heavy night-trucking without causing health risks.
In the coming weeks, City Hall plans to roll out fuel incentives for participating villages, start school recycling programs, and set up secondary collection for mountain barangays. However, these steps remain temporary fixes.
Until state regulators approve nearer, fully compliant regional facilities or the Binaliw site safely reopens, Cebu City taxpayers will continue paying P1 billion annually to haul trash across the island—while local neighborhoods carry the daily burden of living next to temporary waste collection sites.