The Cebu City Council on Sept. 12, 2026, demanded that the Executive Department “present a comprehensive, long-term waste management plan within 15 days due to soaring temporary hauling costs following the Jan. 8, 2026, Binaliw landfill landslide.”
The 15-day deadline is reasonable if the Cebu City Council is asking for a concrete roadmap, but it is unrealistic if it expects the entire waste-management problem to be solved in 15 days. That distinction is important.
The City Council’s request, to put it politely, came amid a very serious financial crisis: Cebu City is generating about 600 to 700 tons of waste daily, while hauling it to Aloguinsan for disposal costs about P3,906 per ton. This totals roughly P4.2 million to P4.5 million daily and close to P2 billion annually.
Seriously, I think Cebu City Mayor Nestor Archival and his team can come up with a comprehensive plan in 15 days, as this is presumably just a planning deadline.
Following the Jan. 8 Binaliw tragedy, the administration should have already conducted studies and held discussions regarding alternative disposal sites, transfer stations, segregation, recycling, composting and the possible reopening of Binaliw.
I do not pretend to be an expert, but I feel my ideas — backed by research on the matter — could offer the executives and officials of Cebu City and neighboring localities some direction on managing their garbage.
1. The City should stop thinking of garbage primarily as a disposal problem.
This is the conceptual shift that is urgently needed. It is a fact that the City continues to produce 600 to 700 tons of waste daily and merely seeks a bigger landfill.
The rationale behind Republic Act (RA) 9003 is essentially to reduce, segregate, recycle and compost, ensuring that only residuals are disposed of. Cebu City officials have already recognized this, as indicated in their May waste emergency order emphasizing waste reduction, segregation, recycling and composting, with residual waste ultimately going to a landfill.
But the question is: has this emergency order been implemented to the letter?
2. Let every barangay do its job as a true waste-management unit.
Barangay garbage trucks should do more than just pick up bags. Each barangay, as mandated by law, should have:
Functioning source segregation
An operational Material Recovery Facility (MRF)
Composting for biodegradable waste
A system for recyclables
Designated collection schedules
Accurate records of generated waste
Strict accountability for violations
The City should publish a barangay-by-barangay waste scorecard. Right now, garbage collection remains dysfunctional.
3. Establish a Metro Cebu common waste-management system.
This is perhaps one of the most critical solutions. As I have noted before, garbage does not respect political boundaries.
Cebu City, Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu, Talisay and the surrounding municipalities form a single urban ecosystem. The law allows for coordination and consolidation among local government units (LGUs) for shared waste-disposal facilities.
Cebu City should not assume it must solve its garbage problem alone. It can establish a regional solid-waste system. One or more properly engineered regional sanitary landfills, common transfer stations, shared MRFs and collective recycling or composting facilities would be far more economical than every LGU scrambling independently for disposal space.
4. Treat garbage as a resource, not merely as a liability.
This is where private-sector participation becomes vital. There are businesses willing to recover plastics, cardboard, paper, metals, glass, food waste and construction materials.
The City does not need to own and operate everything. It can establish a system where private operators are paid based on performance and waste diversion rather than simply on the tonnage dumped.
This completely changes the economic incentive. If a contractor earns money merely by hauling tons of garbage, they have little financial incentive to reduce volume. If payment rewards diversion, recycling and recovery, the economics shift in favor of sustainability.
5. Enforce Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).
This is another critical tool beyond simply telling households to segregate. Large producers of plastic packaging and other covered products carry legal responsibilities under the EPR framework.
The principle is simple: those who introduce packaging into the market should share responsibility for what happens to it after consumption. Cebu City should collaborate with national agencies and producers to position itself as a major recovery center for plastics and other recyclables. Otherwise, the City continues to spend millions collecting and transporting materials that private enterprises originally introduced into the marketplace.
6. Composting can dramatically reduce volume.
A substantial portion of household garbage is biodegradable. Instead of transporting wet food waste kilometers away to Aloguinsan, Cebu should establish decentralized composting facilities.
Markets, restaurants, subdivisions, schools and barangays can all serve as collection and processing points. This drastically cuts down the weight and volume eventually destined for landfills.
7. Consider waste-to-energy (WTE).
Although Mayor Archival previously rejected WTE citing environmental concerns and a lack of clear national regulatory certainty, the option should not be dismissed automatically.
The City could commission an independent technical and environmental feasibility study comparing sanitary landfills, regional landfills, mechanical-biological treatment, anaerobic digestion, refuse-derived fuel, WTE and various recycling-composting combinations.
Let science, economics, and environmental safeguards determine which technology offers Cebu the safest, most economical, and most sustainable solution for the next 30 years.
If the present situation drives Cebu City’s annual waste-management expenditure toward P2 billion — compared to about P500 million before the Binaliw disaster—it is far wiser to invest heavily now in a permanent system rather than continue bleeding money on enormous hauling bills. In short, the City should invest its P2 billion into a system that reduces garbage rather than simply hauling it away.
The council must demand a plan with clear targets, timelines, costs, responsible offices and measurable results. Cebu City has had enough of plans without implementation, meetings without decisions, collection without segregation and garbage disposal without long-term management.
The Binaliw disaster should have taught Cebu City one painful lesson: a landfill is not a waste-management system. It is merely the final stop in one.