MANILA, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- A Philippine lawmaker is pushing for utilizing waste-to-energy technologies to improve solid waste management and provide an alternative source of energy as the Southeast Asian country is projected to generate 92 million tons of waste from 2022 to 2025.
Philippine Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said Wednesday that he has filed a bill encouraging the innovations in the recovery, conservation, processing, treatment, and disposal of solid waste by using waste-to-energy technologies.
"Unfortunately, our solid waste disposal system is yet to keep up with the continuously increasing amount of household and domestic wastes that we produce," Zubiri said, adding that waste-to-energy shall be classified as another renewable energy resource.
"This way, not only would we be able to prevent our landfills from being filled up, but we can harness usable energy from non-recyclable waste," Zubiri said.
The Environmental Management Bureau projects that from 2022 to 2025, the country's generated waste will hit 92 million tons.
"The protection of our environment is an important consideration, so safeguards are provided in the proposed measure to make sure that this innovation will not be at the cost of health or environment safety," the senator added. ■