A Senate inquiry on Monday, July 20, 2026, probed the January 8 trash slide at the Binaliw sanitary landfill in Cebu City that killed 36 people, focusing on regulatory lapses and systemic waste management failures.
While Environmental Management Bureau 7 Director John Edward Ang attributed the disaster to seismic activity and heavy rains from typhoon Tino, lawmakers questioned whether improper waste accumulation and non-compliance with Republic Act 9003 contributed to the collapse.
DENR Undersecretary Juan Miguel Cuna revealed post-disaster inspections identified five sanitary landfills under imminent danger, while Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival noted hauling costs doubled to P4.2 million daily after shifting disposal to Aloguinsan.
A SENATE inquiry into the January trash slide at the Binaliw sanitary landfill in Cebu City, which killed 36 people, shifted the spotlight Monday, July 20, 2026, onto systemic failures in the country’s waste management framework and long-standing regulatory lapses.
During a hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change, lawmakers pressed environment officials over why earlier warnings were unheeded and questioned whether internal site conditions contributed to the fatal collapse.
How the tragedy happened
The tragedy occurred on Jan. 8, when a section of the landfill collapsed, burying a nearby material recovery facility — a designated site where workers sort through garbage to retrieve recyclable materials. Most of the victims were employees working at the facility, which had been built inside the landfill compound on ground previously presumed to be stable.
Regulators initially attributed the disaster primarily to natural causes. Environmental Management Bureau 7 Director John Edward Ang testified that frequent seismic activity, followed by heavy rains from typhoon Tino, led to significant water buildup inside the waste pile. The massive volume of leachate — the contaminated liquid that drains or "leaches" from accumulated garbage — that spilled after the collapse supported findings that internal water saturation triggered the slide.
Warnings and systemic problems
However, lawmakers questioned whether environmental triggers tell the full story. Sen. Risa Hontiveros pointed out that Cebu frequently experiences heavy rain and seismic activity, raising questions about whether improper waste accumulation weakened the site.
Hontiveros cited a 2023 Commission on Audit performance audit that had previously flagged the Binaliw facility for approaching capacity due to surging waste volume and inadequate waste diversion — the practice of preventing trash from going to landfills through recycling and composting.
Under Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, sanitary landfills are designed to store only residual waste, such as non-recyclable materials. Biodegradable matter is supposed to be composted, while recyclables are intended for processing elsewhere.
Widespread non-compliance with the law has routinely forced landfills nationwide to absorb mixed garbage well beyond their intended limits. Mixing biodegradable matter with general trash increases moisture levels, produces explosive methane gas and destabilizes the structural integrity of landfill slopes.
Local impact and heavy financial costs
Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival testified that relying strictly on landfill disposal is unsustainable. Cebu City generates between 600 and 700 tons of garbage daily. Of that total, roughly 60 percent is biodegradable, 30 percent is recyclable and only 10 to 15 percent represents actual residual waste.
Without dedicated composting and recycling plants, local waste segregation policies fail because even separated trash eventually gets dumped into the same facilities.
The disaster has also created a major fiscal burden for the local government. Transporting Cebu City’s garbage to an alternative site in Aloguinsan following the collapse doubled hauling costs from P2.1 million to P4.2 million daily — translating to roughly P1 billion annually.
“We can require waste segregation, ask the LGUs (local government units) and barangays to establish material recovery facilities and impose penalties, but if there are no adequate composting, recycling and upcycling facilities, the segregated waste will still end up in the landfill,” Archival told the committee.
A nationwide hazard
National figures underscore the scale of the reliance on landfilling. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) reported that 397 operational sanitary landfills currently serve 805 LGUs across the country.
The Binaliw disaster prompted the DENR Central Office to order nationwide assessments of all active facilities. DENR Undersecretary Juan Miguel Cuna revealed that the post-disaster inspections identified five sanitary landfills under imminent danger, including critical fire risks: the Binaliw facility in Cebu City, alongside landfills in Navotas; Rodriguez, Rizal; Davao City; and Urdaneta, Pangasinan.
Committee chair Sen. Raffy Tulfo suggested incorporating national funding for local composting infrastructure into the proposed National Land Use Act, inviting Archival to serve as a resource person for the bill.
Meanwhile, civil society groups called for complete transparency regarding the official investigation. Patrice Malinao, representing environmental groups at the hearing, presented worker and resident testimonies alleging inadequate personal protective equipment for hazardous waste and claiming that regulatory monitoring relied heavily on drone inspections while warning signs were ignored.
Malinao urged the committee to secure and publicly release the government's full investigation report, noting that while technical compliance documents have been shared, the primary findings explaining the official cause of the collapse remain unavailable to the public. / CAV WITH GERVIE PALUGA, UP CEB INTERN