Visit to Payatas Controlled Landfill

On Saturday, David and I went to the Payatas controlled landfill. Unlike Smokey, Payatas is very much an active dump and receives 1,200T of trash per day, exclusively from Quezon City. In the past, trash was just dumped here with no waste management and over the past 30 years a mountain of 5 million T of trash has grown on this private property. Since 2004 and under the new law RA 9003, the site is being managed by the City and by private contractors.


We were received by engineer Louie and a driver took us up the old dump site. You can see the trash behind the driver in this first picture. From this "mountain" you can view the new dump site right accross. Bulldozers on the right are shaping the mountain. Trucks to the left are returning from the dump. And on top of the mountain, about 300 scavengers are there to sort through trash as it arrives. Most of the 2,500 scanvengers who work at Payatas live in the surrounding area called "The Promised Land," because land was promised to about 10,000 squatters that continue to live illegally.

At Payatas, they derive energy from methane gases with a small engine that can generate about 100kw/day. If they receive the anticipated carbon credits from Kyoto's clean development mechanism, they should be able to pay for new technology that would generate 1 to 4 mega watts per day.

Payatas just won an award for using Vetiver grass on the old dump site first to hold the mountain together and help stablize the mass (Vetiver roots go down about 2-3m), but also because the grass absorbs leachate and heavy metals. Here you can see the informal sector growing behind the Vetiver grass.

There is a small composting facility but it is not used regularly. Most of the people living around Payatas use organic waste to feed their pigs. Here you can see them processing branches from the Typhoon that hit Manila last Thursday.

On the site there is friendly signage, branded t-shirts, flowers planted in driveways... there is an effort to welcome visitors, give tours, present information in a way that makes the whole thing seem more honorable, in a way, more organized and presentable.

Although children are not allowed inside the dumpsite as scavengers and sorters, the area around the landfill is a big community of MRFs and homes. It's a usual day with someone getting a hair cut, a truck being packed with PET bottles, girls playing hop scotch...