Cherry Piquero-Ballescas warned at a June 5, 2026 exhibition that Cebu must urgently reform its waste management to survive an interconnected global "polycrisis" before international 2030 climate deadlines arrive.
The Jan. 8 Binaliw landfill collapse killed 36 people, pushing the facility past its capacity and exhausting Cebu City's ₱500-million waste budget, which diverts public funds away from vital social services.
Advocates are proposing community dividend systems to convert organic waste into fertilizer within 18 days, while Ballescas criticized the Cebu City Council for politicizing the environmental emergency.
CEBU must urgently change how it manages its trash and resources to survive a growing global environmental crisis. Speaking at a World Environment Day exhibition at the Cebu Provincial Capitol grounds on Friday, June 5, 2026, Cherry Piquero-Ballescas warned that isolated solutions are no longer enough because communities are facing connected challenges.
A web of interconnected crises
The urgency comes from what experts call a polycrisis. This is a situation where multiple global problems — including climate change, political conflicts, inflation and poverty — mix together and make each other worse.
This mix creates a dangerous web of emergencies. Making things more urgent, global compliance with the Paris Climate Agreement stands at just 15 percent, leaving humanity less than four years to prevent severe climate consequences like rising sea levels, intense heat waves and destructive typhoons.
In 2015, the Philippines and 192 other United Nations member states promised to work on 17 connected goals for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, local data shows that the country remains severely off-track from meeting these targets.
The deadly cost of Cebu’s trash
In Cebu, this global crisis shows up clearly in a local waste management system pushed past its physical and financial limits. A tragic reminder of these dangers happened on Jan. 8, when a massive wall of trash collapsed at the Binaliw landfill in Cebu City, killing 36 people.
Although the facility was scheduled to close by 2025, it kept operating into 2026, far exceeding its safe capacity. This tragedy has driven up disposal costs, placing a heavy strain on public funds.
Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival reported that the City's annual P500-million budget for waste disposal is no longer enough following the increased costs from the aftermath of the landfill landslide. Ballescas noted that when cities spend huge amounts of money on collecting trash, public funds are taken away from other important areas.
“Instead of allocating it to social services for the poor, the money is reallocated to waste management,” she said. This financial burden is made worse by a common public mindset that treats waste disposal as someone else's responsibility.
As Ballescas observed, “Everybody is saying, ‘This is not my problem. If I throw my waste, somebody else will pick it up for me,’ but it is our problem.”
Turning waste Into food
About 50 to 60 percent of Cebu’s trash consists of wet or organic waste. To fix this, environmental advocates want to shift toward a local community dividend system where residents can trade sorted waste at community centers for rice or food.
Under this model, the collected organic waste would be turned into fertilizer within 18 days. This fast composting method aims to tackle both trash buildup and food scarcity at the same time.
“There are plants, there are vegetables that grow in a month or two. So, you have no hunger. People will be fed, we have food security. It will meet SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) and will meet waste management," Ballescas said.
Local programs are already showing real potential. In Bantayan in northern Cebu, a program lets residents exchange plastic eco-bricks for rice to make construction materials.
Similarly, student groups from the University of Cebu and the University of San Jose-Recoletos have created sustainable technologies. These include alternative broom-making and recycling paper into fuel briquettes to replace charcoal.
Politics and policy gaps
Some official programs already exist, such as the province-wide “Clean Cebu Campaign” launched by Gov. Pamela Baricuatro on March 19 to improve cleanliness. However, advocates note there is still no concrete plan for handling waste.
Furthermore, political disagreements have complicated local plans. Ballescas criticized the Cebu City Council for giving a 30-day ultimatum to the mayor to produce a waste plan, arguing that leaders are turning an environmental emergency into a political game.
“Is the waste management problem of Cebu just the mayor's problem? What is the council doing? They have a committee on environment," Ballescas asked. “They're the ones who are politicizing. You cannot politicize global warming and environmental problems,” she added.
Pathways toward sustainable change
To fix these policy gaps, the Regional Center of Expertise Cebu plans to organize community workshops to design an environmental roadmap for the province. Advocates stress that solving the crisis requires a mix of official policy, youth mentorship, and personal commitment from everyday citizens to sort their trash.
Ballescas described waste segregation as a matter of understanding how living things coexist with humans. “To throw waste is human, but to segregate waste is divine," Ballescas said, emphasizing that the responsibility to act before the 2030 deadline falls on everyone. “We have to save ourselves on or before 2030. And everyone really has to contribute,” she said. / CDF WITH REPORTS FROM JUSTINE JOHN BUGTAI, CNU INTERN