Private sector involvement
While the responsibility to implement the public waste management system falls squarely on the LGU as mandated in RA 9003 and in the Local Government Code, businesses have a big role to play.
Some tourism businesses in El Nido are responding to this challenge and already committed in or at least attempting to address its own wastes. However, most small and medium enterprises, which represent at least 80% of tourism businesses, are not, for reasons such as lack of awareness, perverse incentives that raise costs, lack of technology suppliers, or absence of appropriate information and feasible demonstration sites. Just like in other tourist destinations in the country, few if any regulations exist to encourage or force operators of tourism facilities to optimize resource consumption. As a result, scarce freshwater resources and limited waste processing capacities endanger El Nido’s sensitive environment, jeopardizing the tourism industry, a major component of the the local economy.
Read more on Sustainable Tourism and Waste
Examples include:
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Ten Knots Development Corporation- Materials recycling facility
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Corong-Corong Business Club– Garbage Bin
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Private El Nido Plastic Battle- Clean-Up Drives and Alternatives to Plastic Campaigns- Follow them on Facebook
Basing in the result of the study conducted the Municipal Government needs to strengthen its policy that not only lessen the need for more expensive enforcement and regulatory actions but would also encourage compliance and even cooperation and complementary program from private sector.
Photos of El Nido’s Landfill
El Nido’s Landfill. Photo By Lea Guerro
El Nido’s Landfill. Photo By Lea Guerro
El Nido’s Landfill. Photo By Lea Guerro
Recommendation for Local Government
However, the business sector can opt to a more active role to play beyond helping the municipal government in the collection aspect. As seen from the study, the garbage fee being collected by the Municipal Government of El Nido from local businesses is too low compared to the annual budget for the operation of the current waste management system. The local government ended up rechanneling more than PhP13 million. This shows the mismatch of the garbage fee as the sole source of financing and the financial need of the waste management system. Moreover, it remains to be seen if other components of ecological waste management system were prioritised or even funded. Considering that the government-led waste management planning that includes revisiting its local revenue code may take some time and involves a lot of stakeholders, it is to the self-interest of businesses to be less dependent on this current system and operate an in-house waste management program. Actionable points on the part of businesses include the following:
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Integrating waste management into business operations including accounting of waste-management related expenses including man-hours allocated for waste management activities
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Identify cost mitigation and revenue opportunities in waste management by horizontal (creating separate enterprises) or vertical integration (extending the internal operations), if economically feasible, of in-house food production and edible landscaping with in-house composting and waste management to offset the expenses in waste management .
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Go beyond the out of sight, out of mind approach by engaging the policy and regulatory environment that the LGU is mandated to create.
For effective monitoring of waste generation, it is important to establish waste treatment and disposal quality criteria based on the assimilative capacity of the receiving environment, to undertake waste-related pollution impact monitoring and conduct regular surveillance.
Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, challenged world business leaders during the World Economic Forum in Davos, January 2013 :
“We have to find climate-friendly ways of encouraging economic growth. The good news is we think they exist.”
In similar manner we have to find ways to manage our own wastes while we do our own businesses. The good news is that these ways are already here and waiting to be used.
Originally published in ESTEL Magazine Issue 4, June 2018. Co-written by: Ignacio Sayajon and Mark-Anthony Villaflor
