The complete address, word for word — scroll inside the box to read.
Good afternoon, everyone,
when we talk about housing development in the Phils, we normally talk about the number of houses we need to build, affordability, financing, land availability, infrastructure, and the quality of homes we provide.
Housing development should be viewed as the creation of a functioning community, not simply the construction of houses or condominium buildings.
When we build housing, we are not simply constructing homes, we are creating communities that will generate waste everyday for decades.
housing planning normally provides for:
. roads and transportation
. Water supply
. drainage and sewerage
. Power and utilities
. Sanitation
. Open spaces and community facilities.
I believe, Solid waste management should be considered part of this essential essential community infrastructure.
This is important because how will these communities manage the waste they generate every day? And this question becomes increasingly important as we build larger and high density communities.
The government's Pambansang Pabahay para sa Pilipino or 4 PH Program, includes developers, contractors and local government units (LGU's) among its participants and gives priority to high density and vertical development, though the government has also added the horizontal development and other housing modalities. The government's 4PH framework emphasizes sustainable and resilient housing, making waste systems particularly relevant to community planning.
Housing development and solid waste management therefore have to be planned together.
We should therefore integrate waste management into housing master plan and at the planning stage determine:
- How many families will live here?
- How much waste will they generate?
- Where will the residents segregate their waste?
- Where will recyclables go?
- What will happen to food and other biodegradable waste?
- How much residual waste will eventually require final disposal?
- And who will be responsible for operating the system after the developer turns over the community?
- These questions should be answered before construction is completed, not after the waste has already become a community problem.
The Philippines already has a strong legal foundation in Republic Act No 9003, the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
If you look at RA 9003, Section 21, second paragraph - the only place the Act speak to us. And it says “For premises containing six (6) or more residential units, the local govt unit shall promulgate regulation requiring the owner or person in charge of such premises to… provide for the residents a designated area and containers in which to accumulate source separated recyclable materials to be collected by the city, municipality or private center.
RA 9003 defines segregation at source as separating different materials at their point of origin to promote recycling and reuse and reduce the volume requiring collection and disposal. It also requires an MRF (materials recovery facility) in every barangay or cluster of barangays. MRFs are intended for sorting, segregation, composting and recycling, with residual wastes subsequently transferred to appropriate storage or disposal facilities or sanitary landfills.
The challenge of housing development is to translate these principles into physical design and everyday operation of communities.
I propose a simple model that we can call: Waste-Smart Housing Community
This waste-smart housing development can be a subdivision, horizontal housing, and condominium development. It has five (5) interconnected components.
Plan > Segregate > Collect > Recover > Measure
1. PLAN
Solid waste management begins with the site development plan.
The developer should estimate projected waste generation and incorporate adequate areas for waste segregation, storage, collection and resource recovery.
For vertical housing, this is especially important. A high-rise community places many households within a small land area. DHSUD's 4PH framework recognizes walk-up buildings, mid-rise developments of five to nine floors, and high-rise developments of ten floors and above. (DHSUD)
Waste rooms, collection points and truck access therefore cannot simply occupy whatever space is left after everything else has been designed.
They should be part of the original engineering and architectural plan.
2. SEGREGATE
The second component is segregation at source.
Every household should understand exactly where its waste belongs.
A practical community system can separate:
* biodegradable or compostable waste;
* recyclable materials;
* residual waste; and
* household special wastes requiring separate handling.
But segregation must be convenient.
If we want residents to change their behaviour, we have to make the desired behaviour easy to follow.
And if residents segregate their waste, our collection system must preserve that segregation.
This is how we make the desired behaviour easy — and rewarding.
Our Trash to Cashback program stands on five pillars: Segregate, Exchange, Redeem, Collect, Recycle.
Residents segregate at home. They bring their sorted recyclables — paper, plastic, metal, glass — to a collection point in their own community, where everything is weighed and recorded, and they earn Environmental Points on the spot.
Then comes the pillar that makes the whole system work: REDEEM. Those points are redeemed as cashback at local partner stores — sari-sari stores, pharmacies, neighbourhood businesses. Redemption is the incentive. It is what changes behaviour — because the reward is immediate, useful, and close to home. And because the cashback is redeemed in neighbourhood stores, the value circulates back into the community and stimulates the local economy.
BEST then collects the sorted materials from the points and delivers them to recyclers — so what the residents separated actually gets recycled, and every kilogram is recorded.
We already run this inside master-planned private estates — including Fort Bonifacio in Taguig and the Ortigas Center — the same environment as the communities we build.
Today the program runs in 30 cities, at 339 collection points, with more than 23,700 residents participating and 4.18 million kilograms of recyclables recovered — all of it measured, not estimated.
When segregating pays, households keep doing it. That is behaviour change you can sustain — and it is ready to be designed into a waste-smart housing community from day one.
If you would like to see how the program works, the five pillars are on the screen — you can scan the QR code or visit trashtocashback.com.
3. COLLECT
Collection should be designed around the segregated system.
Different waste streams may require different schedules, containers or collection arrangements.
The LGU, developer, homeowners' association and waste-management service provider should know their respective responsibilities.
This is particularly important during the transition from developer-managed communities to homeowner-managed communities.
The waste-management system should not disappear when the developer completes and turns over the project.
4. RECOVER
This is where we can make a major change in how we think about waste.
Our objective should no longer be simply:
“How efficiently can we collect garbage?”
The better question is:
“How much material can we prevent from becoming garbage in the first place?”
Recyclable plastics, paper, cardboard, metals, glass and other materials can have continuing value.
Biodegradable materials can potentially be composted or otherwise appropriately processed.
The MRF or recovery system therefore becomes important.
RA 9003 provides that MRFs should be designed to receive, sort, process and store compostable and recyclable materials efficiently and in an environmentally sound manner. (Lawphil)
The objective is to send only the remaining residual waste to appropriate final disposal.
Connecting housing communities to EPR
There is another important opportunity.
The Extended Producer Responsibility Act of 2022, Republic Act No. 11898, strengthened the country's framework for the recovery and recycling of plastic packaging.
The law expressly provides for waste recovery approaches such as redemption and buy-back schemes, diversion into recycling and other value chains, transportation to appropriate facilities, and partnerships with LGUs, communities and the informal waste sector. (Lawphil)
This creates an opportunity to connect housing communities with EPR programs.
Construction waste must also be addressed
Our responsibility should begin even before residents move in.
RA 9003's definition of solid waste includes construction debris among the non-hazardous wastes covered by the law. (Lawphil)
Housing developers and contractors should therefore consider construction waste management during project implementation.
Concrete, metals, wood, plastics, cardboard and packaging materials should be separated wherever practicable for reuse, recycling or appropriate recovery rather than automatically treating everything as material for disposal.
A sustainable housing community should begin with responsible construction.
Measure what we accomplish
Finally, every waste-smart housing community should measure its results.
We should know:
* how much waste the community generates;
* how much is properly segregated;
* how much recyclable material is recovered;
* how much biodegradable waste is diverted;
* how much residual waste goes to final disposal; and
* how many households consistently participate.
This allows developers, LGUs and community managers to determine whether their programs are actually working.
A proposal for government and the housing sector
I would therefore like to put forward a proposal for consideration:
Major new housing developments in the Philippines should incorporate an Integrated Solid Waste Management and Resource Recovery Plan as part of community planning and development.
The plan can cover infrastructure, segregation at source, collection systems, recovery and recycling, responsibilities after turnover, resident education, performance measurement and appropriate linkage with EPR programs.
This does not require us to reinvent Philippine waste policy.
RA 9003 already establishes segregation, recycling, composting, resource recovery and MRFs as important parts of ecological solid waste management. RA 11898 has added a stronger EPR framework focused on plastic packaging recovery and circular-economy principles. (Lawphil)
The opportunity is to integrate these principles more deliberately into the way we plan and build housing.
Closing
The Philippines needs more housing.
But as we respond to that need, we also have an opportunity to determine what kind of communities we are creating.
We can build communities where waste becomes an increasing burden on LGUs.
Or we can design communities where segregation is convenient, recyclable materials are recovered, residents participate, and only the remaining residual waste requires final disposal.
A sustainable home should be part of a sustainable community.
And a sustainable community should have responsible solid waste management built into its design from the very beginning.
If government, developers, LGUs, waste-management companies, producers and residents work together, housing development can become an important platform for improving solid waste management in the Philippines.
That is the opportunity before us: to build homes while also building cleaner, more responsible and more resource-efficient communities.
