DAVAO CITY—Businesses here have been asked to carefully craft their Solid Waste Management Plan and abide by them as the city finds ways to reduce the daily disposal of garbage to its landfill.
The City Environment and Natural Resources Office (CENRO) has issued the warning as businesses file this month either their application to operate or renewal of permits and pay their tax dues.
The CENRO said a solid waste management plan is required of every operational business in the city in order to acquire a solid waste management certificate from the office.
“The purpose of the solid waste management plan regards with their disposal system, how they manage their waste. The only major requirement is the solid management plan,” said CENRO chief Marivic Reyes.
The certificate is required when applying for new business permits but it would not be required anymore upon renewal. However, failure to abide by the management plan once inspected anytime would still have consequent penalties for business owners, Reyes said.
“It is within the law that an establishment operating without a Solid Waste Management Certificate will be penalized because this is in violation of our ordinance, with a penalty of P5,000,” she added.
Establishments must follow the system indicated in their solid waste management plan, a copy of which would be kept by CENRO as reference for future inspections. The plan must include segregation schematics, collection points, the disposal schedule, and other waste management details, all of which are geared at making sure that only residuals or unusable materials are collected by the CENRO.
Businesses found violating their waste management plan would be penalized and may have to reapply for another solid waste management certificate.
Reyes said measures on responsible waste management are being implemented even more stringently in the city due to the continuously increasing volume of trash collected.
In 2020, the office collected 223,431 tons of garbage. This increased to 254,750 tons in 2021 and 285,829 tons in 2022. All of these ended up in the city’s sanitary landfill, which is already full, the CENRO said.
Although the trend points to an increase in the total volume of garbage collected, she said the city has been effective to a certain extent in minimizing the garbage buildup with daily collection still range between 600 and 700 tons of garbage.
“If we look at the studies, there really is a decrease in our collection. Most just cannot notice this because the number of subdivisions and incoming condominiums in our city have also increased,” Reyes said.
She added that maintaining the daily average volume collected within the range of 600 to 700 tons is the critical indicator to the city’s solid waste management.