Manila, a city of 10 million people, produces about 6,600 tons of garbage each day. One dump site, Payatas, was shut after a landslide last July killed more than 200 scavengers who lived there. City authorities closed the other major landfill on Dec. 31 when its operating contract expired. They reopened it in January temporarily after residents began dumping garbage in the street. Theoretically, a 1999 Clean Air Act bans incineration.
Manila has yet to identify a new landfill site.
This provides a 20 to 40 percent return on investment, institute officials said, making it an affordable option by which communities and private firms can earn income. Media reports say that 80 percent of Manila's garbage is recyclable. The first step in recycling is separating the waste at source into biodegradable and non biodegradable, but some homemakers seem reluctant to do that, non-government outfits say. Linis-Ganda, which buys waste from Manila homes, said some 300,000 households of a total of 1.6 million separate their garbage. It hopes to reach another 300,000 homes by end 2001.