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Calls to close the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill in barangay Inayawan, Cebu City, have been renewed after another fire broke out at the facility last week.
Environment lawyer Benjamin Cabrido said measures being taken at the landfill were not addressing the core problems there, which was lack of waste segregation.
?What they are doing now is just palliative. They are not solving the problem,? Cabrido said.
He emphasized that there should be waste segregation at the barangay level before trash is dumped into the landfill.
However, closure of the dumpsite is impossible at this point because the city has nowhere else to put its trash, said Councilor Nestor Archival.
Cabrido and other members of Global Legal Action on Climate Change (GLACC) have been advocating for the strict implementation of Republic Act No. 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000.
?At the present state of the landfill, this should be closed,? he said.
He also said that additional measures should be in place to ensure that smoke emissions from the site would be avoided or stopped.
Cabrido suggested that there should also be plans to ?catch and store? methane released from the site.
?(Methane) can even be used to power the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), which utilizes compressed natural gas,? he said, referring to the mass transport project proposed by Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
Councilor Archival, chairman of the City Council?s committee on environment, said Cabrido?s idea for a methane capture system was hard to implement because the technology was not yet available in the country and would cost much.
?We?re not yet ready for that. That?s good to know, but we can?t do that yet,? the councilor said.
Archival admitted that City Ordinance 2031, which required households to segregate their waste before it is collected, has not been enforced.
?We still have not fully implemented the ordinance because garbage is not collected on time. The barangay captains also have other responsibilities,? Archival said.
While the city has been encouraging barangays to put up processing areas for biodegradable waste, ?we can?t force it on them,? he said.
?They have lots of reasons, one is the budget and the area.?
He cited, however, that there is already a composting area in barangay Kalunasan, under the viaduct towards the South Road Properties. Another one is located at the North Reclamation Area, near the SM City Cebu mall.
Two other composting sites would be operational by January, he said.
GLACC called for the closure of the Inayawan landfill last April, when the site started emitting thick smoke following a fire. The fire itself lasted a week, but the smoke remained for several weeks after.
The most recent fire, which broke out around 9 p.m. Friday, only affected an estimated 10 percent of the landfill?s surface area. It was put out by midnight.
Cabrido and his colleague, Gloria Estenzo-Ramos, had called the smoke emission an ?environmental disaster.?
Estenzo-Ramos earlier argued that despite its name, the Inayawan Sanitary Landfill was being operated like an open dumpsite rather than a landfill.
Under Republic Act 9003, open dumpsites have been illegal since 2006.
