The Philippine's Clean Air Act Paradox: We End Up with Bad Air Anyway

Before you bear down on me, please read through this brainstorming I had a few days ago. (Well, you know I have a lot of time in my hands these days.)  I believe this is an important issue that should be tackled and not simply whisked away as another anti-environmentalist rant. Because this is not; this is anything but that. So here goes...

The Clean Air Act is a landmark law that, among other things, basically bans the use of incinerators in the Philippines, the first country to do so. However, without incinerators, what are we going to do with all that trash?

Aside from recycling -- which many people don't do anyway -- the most common answer would be landfills -- what little land we have left will be used just to make way for the tons of trash from Metro Manila. And that's just where most of our trash ends up. Nobody likes landfills, especially the people who are forced to live next to them. The Payatas incident back in early 2000 is a good reminder of that -- and that they are not environmentally friendly. Is there really a doubt why people are complaining when they learn that they will be neighbors of a very large landfill?

Anyway, as far as I understand, millions of pesos are spent to have large tracts of land across the nation used as landfills, such as the San Jose Del Monte site just outside Metro Manila and the recently opened site in Pangasinan. All those tons of trash produces methane -- a large amount in fact that it can be used as a source of power but, unfortunately is a very potent greenhouse gas. Methane has a global warming potential (GWP) of 30 -- which means that every kilogram of methane has 30x more effect on climate change than carbon dioxide [1].