A waste is viewed as a discarded material, which has no consumer value to the person abandoning it. According to World Health Organization (WHO), the term 'solid waste' is applied to unwanted and discarded materials from houses, street sweepings, commercial and agricultural operations arising out of mass activities. It is a mixture of vegetable and organic matter; inert matters, such as glass, metal, stones, ashes, cinders, textiles, wood, grass etc. Uncontrolled waste dumping or waste disposed in unscientific landfills can have serious environmental impacts: landfills consume land space, and cause air, water and soil pollution. Growing population, increased urbanization rates and economic growth are dramatically changing the landscape of domestic solid waste in terms of generation rates, waste composition and treatment technologies[1].

Much of our garbage also is dumped into the ocean. About ten percent of all the world's plastic waste end up in the ocean. Due to ocean currents, most of this plastic gathers in the Pacific Ocean. It also greatly affects marine life. Over a million seabirds and 100 thousand marine mammals die every year from trying to eat these plastics which they mistake for food. (Marks and Howden, 2008).

Without an effective and efficient solid-waste management program, the waste generated from various human activities, both industrial and domestic, can result in health hazards and have a negative impact on the environment. Understanding the waste generated, the availability of resources, and the environmental conditions of a particular society are important for developing an appropriate waste-management system.

Economic development and rapid growth of urban population have resulted in the generation of enormous quantities of municipal solid waste (MSW) that cannot, any longer, be disposed in the makeshift landfills of yesteryear.

In the Philippines, waste generation rate progressed from 19.2 million tons in 2015 to a projected rate at 21.1 million tons by 2020[2], consequently increasing the need for more disposal facilities. Disposal facilities commonly landfills and dumpsites are convenient options owing to accessibility, inexpensiveness, and potentiality for methane gas recovery although other alternatives are available (e.g recycling and composting). However, the prevalent use of landfills and dumpsites in the case of the Philippines is reflective of the gaps for solid waste management (SWM) implementation under the Republic Act 9003 (RA 9003)-Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000. This is attributed to the high cost of management and lack of enabling agencies, hindering SWM. Disposal sites must have appropriate control for leachate, landfill gas, and a lined pit to ensure safe operations. On-site monitoring, however, revealed incomplete leachate and gas handling and a need to rehabilitate the disposal site facilities. This is a major concern for countries like the Philippines whose major option for SW disposal is through landfills and dumpsites. The possibility of environmental contamination and human exposure to leachate and other contaminants from the disposal sites are inevitable. Previous studies revealed contamination of groundwater, contamination of soil, human health risks, and risk exposure of other organisms.

“Currently about 35,000 tons of municipal solid waste are generated by the Philippines daily, and more than 8,600 tons per day in Metro Manila alone. A sizable proportion of the refuse is openly burned, further worsening the quality of the city’s already heavily polluted air,” said Aldrin B. Plaza, urban development officer for the sustainable development and climate change department at the Asian Development Bank. “The problem extends beyond the capital,” Plaza noted in a written piece posted on the ADB website. Plaza pointed out that there had been efforts to address this challenge through the 2000 Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, which was considered a landmark legislation on environmental management. The said law was aimed at systematically organizing and sustainably managing the collection and disposal of municipal solid waste in the country. Plaza noted that the law mandated the establishment of municipal solid waste collection systems anchored on the 3R formula—Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. It also provided specific deadlines for closing unsanitary open dumpsites, and supported properly engineered sanitary landfills as the only sustainable means of final garbage disposal. Seventeen years later however, the law’s objectives are yet to be achieved. According to Plaza, cities are still dumping waste on open dumpsites. In 2010, when all the open dumpsites should have been closed as mandated by the law, 790 were still operating. Plaza identified three major obstacles that have contributed to this failure: the “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) attitude; financing and governance; and the ban on incineration, which has eliminated a viable alternative to landfilling. He said that while social perception and assessment exercises were used to educate communities about the difference between materials recovery facilities, sanitary landfills and open dumpsites, the common notion of what a dumpsite looks like is embedded in people’s minds.

“Making matters worse is that cities that have welcomed dumping have not been able to present a good model. Take for instance the (controlled) dumpsite in Payatas, Metro Manila, where leachate has found to leak through to the Marikina River tributaries. In 2000, an enormous pile of garbage collapsed, killing over 200 people and injuring hundreds more,” Plaza explained. A second obstacle, according to Plaza, is that the investment costs and management burden of a comprehensive municipal solid waste management system are proving to be too burdensome for many cities. For one, investing in such systems is costly for a single local government unit to shoulder, while some LGUs lack the technical competency.

Meanwhile, an existing law—the 1999 Clean Air Act—prohibited incineration for municipal waste disposal. The 2000 law, it can be recalled, solely prescribed engineered sanitary landfills as the acceptable method of final waste disposal.

Plaza cited studies as stating that sanitary landfills with methane recovery systems produce two to three times more carbon dioxide equivalent, sulfur dioxide, and nitrous oxide than incineration-based electricity systems per kilowatt-hour of power generated. He added that landfills without methane capture are much worse, because the escaping methane is 34 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide.

Apparently, the Philippines is reportedly the only country in the world that bans incineration for the disposal of wastes. Other countries such as The Netherlands and Singapore have incinerators to process wastes.

“Seventeen years after the passage of the Ecological Solid Waste Management, MSW collection and disposal is still a major problem. The NIMBY attitude, weak LGU capacities, and lack of alternatives to landfilling have aggravated the situation,” Plaza said.

“The private sector does have the technical competence and available solutions to solve the problem. Perhaps it’s time for private companies—especially energy and recycling businesses—to step in,” he concluded[3].

Facing the current waste problem in Boracay, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) officials believe there is one viable solution: turn waste into energy. DENR executives believe garbage can be used as biomass to generate energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of the waste. A form of energy recovery, waste-to-energy (WtE) is being eyed as a long-term solution to Boracay Island’s garbage problem.

Leones, the DENR’s Undersecretary for Policy, Planning, International Affairs and Foreign-Assisted Projects, said that with the poor enforcement, if not defiance to abide by a lawful order to enforce a measure that seeks to address the looming garbage crisis, the establishment of a WtE facility becomes inevitable.

The proposal for the establishment of a WtE facility, hence, was made by Eligio T. Ildefonso, Executive Secretary of the National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC). To qoute: “I was the one who made the proposal during our action planning sessions [last month] because it is the only viable long-term solution to the garbage problem on Boracay.” He said that “WtE is just one of the options for Boracay, as there are other ways to prevent the garbage problem from worsening. This, Ildefonso said, couldn’t be done without the full cooperation of all the stakeholders.” Besides, Ildefonso said he is not recommending the establishment of an engineered sanitary landfill on the island, as it is a fragile island ecosystem already facing enormous pollution problems.

As to the legality of WTE facility under the Philippines RA 8749 (Clean Air Act), the Supreme Court, in the case of MMDA vs. JANCOM, G.R. No. 147465 January 30, 2002 (425 Phil 961), confirmed the declaration of the Court of Appeals which states that; “Once again, we make reference to the insightful declarations of the Court of Appeals: Sec. 20 of the Clean Air Act pertinently reads: SECTION 20. Ban on Incineration- Incineration, hereby defined as the burning of Municipal, bio-chemical and hazardous wastes, which emits poisonous and toxic fumes, is hereby prohibited: x x x.” (Supreme Court Ruling) “Section 20 does not absolutely prohibit incineration as a mode of waste disposal; rather only those burning processes which emit poisonous and toxic fumes are banned.”