Proceedings of The 6th International Conference on Management, Economics and Finance
Year: 2023
DOI:
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To Incinerate, Or Not To Incinerate, That Is the Question (Balancing Solid Waste Management and Sustainable Land Use in the Philippines)
Alewijn Aidan K. Ong, MBA
ABSTRACT:
The unabated growth of the global population has led to uncontrolled increases in solid waste generation. Legislation and policies have been put into place to ensure that this issue is addressed. However, as in the case of the Philippines, two landmark environmental laws have been enacted but these have banned controlled incineration or the utilization of waste-to-energy facilities as alternative ways to reduce solid waste diversion rates. The National Solid Waste Management Strategy provides a roadmap to address waste management but prioritizes the use of sanitary landfills as its preferred strategy. This policy research paper, through the use of integrated landscape approach, has pointed out that the aforementioned strategy is neither sustainable nor land-use efficient. In an already tightly competitive arena of land utilization in the Philippines, the sanitary landfill strategy, were it to be fully implemented, will require the country to give up thousands upon thousands of hectares of valuable land resources that could have been used for more socially and economically productive purposes. While solid waste management is crucial in preserving the environment and human health, there is a need to balance strategies with resource conservation to ensure that policies are holistic and promote sustainable development for the generations to come.
keywords: incineration, land use efficiency, resource management, solid waste management policy, waste-to-energy