A FIRE broke out at an abandoned landfill in Navotas City on Saturday and raged for days before it was put out. The smoldering pile of residual garbage created a heavy haze that lingered over most of northern Metro Manila and parts of Bulacan.
The incident highlighted a waste management problem in the National Capital Region that could only worsen because of weak enforcement of waste reduction and segregation strategies.
Greenpeace Philippines said the landfill fire “underscores how the government’s approach to waste is a total disaster.”
The landfill was shut down in August 2025 over expropriation issues. Greenpeace said the recent fire showed that “disposal sites remain hazardous even after closure. Shutting down a landfill does not remove the threats it poses to communities and ecosystems.”
Serious efforts to establish guidelines for the collection, transport, processing and disposal of solid waste started in 2000 with the enactment of Republic Act (RA) 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
RA 9003 required local government units (LGUs) and other sectors concerned to come up with solid waste management plans.
Waste is classified as biodegradable, recyclable and residual, and collected at disposal sites and waste management facilities for processing.
The law called for strict regulations for opening and maintaining sanitary landfills. They should not be built near aquifers, groundwater reservoirs or watershed areas.
A landfill site must be large enough to accommodate the waste of the community it services in five years. And it must be able to contain leachate — the toxic ooze produced by collected waste — and prevent it from contaminating water sources.
In 2022, the World Bank assessed the implementation of the solid waste management plan in Metro Manila. It found that 33,000 cubic meters of waste was collected daily from all 17 Metro Manila local governments. That meant a waste collection rate of about 5,742 tons per day (tpd), or about 60 percent of the projected 9,498 tpd for 2020.
By comparison, Jakarta had a collection rate of 74 percent in 2017; and Bangkok, 81 percent in 2018.
Clearly, there were loopholes in implementing the waste management plan. The World Bank said villages and LGUs lacked proper coordination in collecting garbage. Trash was left uncollected in some villages, and LGU garbage trucks could not reach depressed or slum neighborhoods because the roads were too narrow.
As a result, uncollected garbage littered streets, vacant lots and clogged waterways.
According to a subsequent report by the Senate Economic Planning Office, only 85 percent of waste in Metro Manila is collected and taken to sanitary landfills. About 15 percent of the estimated 9,212.92 tons of garbage generated by Metro Manila residents wound up in canals and creeks, and eventually found their way into the Manila Bay.
In 2024, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) launched its 10-year Road to Zero Waste program, anchored on a “closed-loop system” of waste reduction, recycling and resource recovery.
“The program aims to cover all types of waste that employs sustainable, practical and preferably, local solutions and methods,” the MMDA chairman at the time, Romando Artes, announced.
Artes said the agency would promote social and behavioral change among Metro Manila’s residents and “catalyze proactive actions.”
The program will also build around the fact that 21.44 percent of household waste can be recycled, and 85 percent of public market waste is compostable.
For Greenpeace, solid waste management will continue to be a problem unless the government takes a more decisive stance to address it.
Incidents like the Navotas landfill fire will recur “because the Philippines continues to rely on weakly enforced and inadequate waste policies that focus on disposal over prevention,” it said.
Greenpeace added that “critical gaps in policies like the Extended Producer Responsibility Act continue to allow corporate overproduction and dependence on single-use products and packaging, which are the main contributors to plastic pollution that is driving the increase in waste volumes.”
The World Health Organization warns that lack of or poor waste management “has negative socioeconomic effects, including on living standards, economic growth potential and community relations.”
Building an effective and sustainable solid waste management program presents complex technical challenges. The government must face up to these challenges.