WASTE MANAGEMENT. Dagupan City village officials during the project presentation by Geocycle, the waste management unit of Holcim Philippines, in Dagupan City on Feb. 8, 2024. Geocycle and the city government are partnering to address the waste problem of the city. (Photo courtesy of Mayor Belen Fernandez)
DAGUPAN CITY – The local government here has teamed up with Holcim Philippines to address the city’s solid waste management problem by turning wastes into energy through cement kiln co-processing.
Mayor Belen Fernandez, in an interview on Thursday, said the building materials company will collect plastic-based and rubber-based wastes from the city and turn them into alternative energy and raw materials for cement processing.
Holcim Philippines, in a statement, said co-processing is a government-approved and globally-recognized waste management technology that repurposes qualified discarded materials into alternative low-carbon fuels and raw materials in making cement.
The process’ environmental advantages include the extremely high temperatures of kiln and longer treatment time that prevent formation of harmful gasses.
Fernandez said they target to process 40 tons of the 60 tons of solid wastes at the city’s dumpsite in the village of Bonuan Boquig here.
“We are expecting to lower the cost of operation once the wastes are reduced,” she said, but declined to elaborate.
Fernandez said village officials and owners of commercial establishments have been tasked to implement waste segregation for easier collection of garbage for the tie-up project.
As part of the deal, Holcim will provide the city government supply of cement, which will be used in the material recovery facilities or in the villages that are in need of cement.
“But we are not after that primarily. We are after the long-term benefits such as the plan for Bonuan to become a tourism destination, which was not possible because of the 60-year-old open dumpsite,” Fernandez said in Filipino.
In 2020, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) ordered the closure of the open dumpsite in accordance with the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act or Republic Act No. 9003. (PNA)
