CITY : Davao City
COUNTRY : Philippines
POPULATION : 2,498,849 (Estimated in 2023)
SIGNED DECLARATION : August 25, 2022
MAYOR : Sebastian Z. Duterte
CITY CONTACT : [email protected]

Davao City is a first-class, highly urbanized city situated in the southeastern part of Mindanao Island. Compose of 182 barangays with an estimated population of 2,498,849 Davaoeños in 2023. Davao city is known for its rich culture and traditions where the Kadayawan festival is celebrated yearly, a festival of celebration of life, thanksgiving for gifts of nature, the wealth of the culture, bounties, abundance of harvest, and serenity of living. The festivities showcase 11 tribes of the indigenous diverse culture of the region. Davao city takes pride when it comes to peace and order.

Executive Order 53 of Davao City Solid waste management ordinance signed by City Mayor Sebastian Duterte “the city must provide an efficient and effective system in solid waste and garbage collection, however; collection conducted in designated collection points by the city collection trucks. Not all barangays are covered by the city collection, especially those in far-flung areas.

WWF is implementing the No Plastics in Nature initiative - a global movement to stop plastic pollution by 2030 to implement initiatives in waste management in 4 different landscapes of Davao city. WWF identified 3 types of barangays: high-end, Ru-Ban (Rural-Urban) and low-income. High-end is mostly subdivisions, and the homeowner’s association has a garbage collection fee. Meanwhile, the Ru-Ban Barangays are those areas that started as rural but slowly transitioned to urban. While low income is commonly occupied by marginalized groups who take chances in earning a higher income in the city. Through consultation and recommendations of the CENRO these 3 barangays’ waste management model has the potential for scaling up or developing and implementing interventions based on their category.

Barangay Hizon has 11 subdivisions, wherein households pay a monthly fee of 50 pesos for waste collection services. The fees collected will be used for MRF operations. WWF's best intervention is to provide plastic for those plastics not accommodated by junk shops, such as PET and HDPE. This will increase the likelihood that these plastics will be diverted with their conversion to upcycled products like chairs. The plastic shredder provided can shred about 20 kilograms of plastic per hour. With this equipment, Barangay Hizon now shreds plastics every Wednesday for about 4 hours, weighing about 15-20 kilos (equivalent to a maximum of 1,600 pieces of 500-mL PET bottles or 780 pieces of 1.5-mL PET bottles) for 4 hours. This solution increases non-biodegradable waste diverted (currently 400 kilos) by 20% or 80 kilos per month.

Barangay Tacunan has 19 puroks (villages). They have an active women's organization located in Purok 11 Phase 10 that has been involved in household waste segregation and diversion in junk shops as well as providing alternative refilling systems for laundry essentials. This system in the barangay has been implemented in partnership with the Ecowaste Coalition. Given the women's group's experience with solid waste management, the project explored the possibility of identifying and supporting solutions they further wanted to implement in their community through a design thinking workshop series conducted with Pure Oceans. The projects that were implemented are the improvement of the barangay MRF and the completion of their community garden, as reflected in their action plan presented below. Barangay MRF located in Purok 11 has an estimated total volume of 5,412 kilos of recyclables, of which about 1,146 kilos (equivalent to 91,680 pieces of 500 mL PET bottles or 44,694 pieces of 1.5 mL PET bottles) are plastic. All these recyclables are being sold to junk shops. The community garden composted about 1,200 kilos of biodegradables and recycled about 300 PET bottles.

The Toril Kamlabuan Association was founded by Nanay Elena Mabano. It is a local social enterprise that upcycles low-value plastics like sachets into products for sale. This women-led enterprise has been helping the barangay by purchasing sachets per kilo for upcycling, which leads to an increase in plastic waste segregation given the economic value that Kalambuan brings. WWF further supported Kalambuan in increasing their sales so they can continue their sustainability efforts and explored how to support the barangay solid waste management system through the Sangguniang Kabataan for initiating reuse, reduce, recycle, and clean-up drive activities that will benefit the Kalambuan association for the sachets and laminates collected and ensure a secondary market.

Women's Bright in Barangay 23-C is also founded by a women's group formerly known as the Isla Verde Pangkabuhayan Association, situated in a coastal part of Davao City. Before this project, WWF implemented projects with the youth leaders, but these were not sustained because of the changed priorities brought by the pandemic. WWF also worked with Women’s Bright, the women’s organization headed by Inday Abe, which led to the establishment of the refilling station in Barangay 23-C for branded dishwashing and laundry products. The project helped ensure the sustainability of Women’s Bright by supporting them in the registration of their group for the possibility of expansion

WWF is implementing the "No Plastics in Nature" initiative, a global movement to stop plastic paollution by 2030, to implement initiatives in waste management in four different landscapes of Davao City. Through the help of city government partners and other stakeholders under the plastic Smart Cities Initiative in Davao to reduce plastic pollution in the Davao River and the Davao Gulf Clean-up activities were carried out with the assistance of a well-organized group the community: youth volunteers, barangay officials, the coastguard, and a group of medical professionals collected a total of 12,147kg of waste, the majority of which was PET, which was directly sold to a junk shop.

Apart from clean-up activities, the projects supported two community enterprises, namely Kalambuan and Women’s Bright. These are women's groups driven to reuse and recycle plastic waste into products. We also facilitated training to boost their sales using the influence of social media marketing. As a result, Kalambuan and Women’s Bright were able to improve their operations. Women’s Bright is now registered in DTI with the supports