There is a planned facility that will deal with 8 tons of waste in Cebu City Daily. In waste disposal areas, it’s mostly the diapers that stink. This and the need to reduce wastes, has prompted two institutions to work together in an effort to recycle used diapers.

The University of San Carlos (USC) and the FDRCon Co. Inc. recently signed a memorandum of agreement to develop a treatment facility for diapers and napkins. Diapers constitute two to three percent of wastes generated everyday, said lawyer Ervin Estandarte, FDRCon vice president for operations. He said diapers need to undergo treatment because these contain both organic and inorganic substances.

The FDRCon runs Cebu’s first integrated resource recovery facility in Barangay Pangdan, Naga City. The facility, established in March last year, enables a systematic collection, recovery, recycling and treatment of municipal solid waste.

Dr. Evelyn Taboada, professor at the USC Department of Chemical Engineering, said they will develop a technology that will yield biogas, compost and recyclable inorganic materials from diapers. “We are helping LGUs solve their problems (on garbage),” Estandarte said in an interview.

Estandarte said about eight tons of diaper wastes are generated in Cebu City every day. Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act of 2000, mandates local governments to establish a solid waste management plan that emphasizes garbage reduction, re-use, recycling and composting. Whatever cannot be recycled, re-used should be dumped in a sanitary landfill.

Taboada said graduating chemical engineering students of the USC will help in the research and experiment during the first phase of the project. “We have the technology to do it,” she added. Under the agreement, the FDRCon will provide funding, facility and sample of diaper wastes, while the USC will do the experiment dn develop the technology.

Taboada said the second phase of the project will be the actual implementation of the facility and some fine-tuning of the technology.

When things are working, we hope to expand it to different LGUs. Taboada said the USC has had partnerships with several companies on different concerns, including pesticides and energy.

“Our task is to transmit knowledge. Update knowledge and useful knowledge. It must be useful not only to an individual but to the society at large as well, said Fr. Dionisio Miranda, SVD, who being the president, signed in behalf of USC.”

The MRF, which sits on a 7 hectare property in Pangdan, started operating in June last year, Today, the facility processes 50 tons of wastes everyday, a big chunk of which are sold to recyclers, about 20 percent are processed into biofuel, while some are made into compost.