The municipality of Taytay in Palawan, Philippines, is intensifying its efforts to mitigate marine plastic pollution through a strengthened partnership with WWF-Philippines. A new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has been signed on April 7, 2025, to formalize the existing collaboration between WWF-Philippines and three island barangays within Taytay, namely Beton, Debangan and Paly.
The MOU sets out to enhance the coordiation of solid waste management between the three island barangays and mainland Taytay, thereby reducing plastic leakage from the coastal municipality where increasing tourism numbers are anticipated to increase plastic waste production.
Based on an inclusive design thinking process conducted with local stakeholders involving barangay captains, local communities and municipality officials in April 2023, four key action areas were identified:
- Household Waste Segregation: Initiating awareness campaigns and educational programmes to encourage residents to segregate their waste at the source, ensuring proper separation of recyclables from non-recyclables.
- Purok (sub-village) Level Collection: Identifying waste collectors at the purok level, with one assigned per purok in each of the three island barangays. These collectors will receive training on SWM and processes to improve waste collection within their respective areas.
- Barangay Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) for Proper Storage: Establishing Materials Recovery Facilities at the barangay level to stock and sort the collected recyclable materials before further processing.
- Transportation of Recyclables to Taytay Mainland: Research for the transportation of recyclable materials to potential recycling facilities and piloting, finding efficient transportation & profitability.
Other potential solutions identified include exploring sustainable financial incentives for waste collectors in the barangays, improving collection schemes and connecting to better markets for recyclable plastic.
The MOU builds upon earlier collaborative efforts, where Taytay’s Poblacion barangay implemented a joint waste characterization study (WACS) with WWF-Philppines in December 2024. The WACS successfully replaced outdated data from 2018 and provided a current analysis that is crucial for informing collection efficiency and optimizing the operations of Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs). Furthermore, these initiatives actively involve the local community to raise awareness, promote proper waste segregation practices at source, and strengthen barangay-level waste management systems.
The MOU sets out clear roles and responsibilities for both the barangays and WWF-Philippines. WWF-Philippines will provide crucial technical support to the barangays on various aspects of waste management, including transportation, promotion of household segregation, efficient waste collection systems, establishment and enhancement of Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), and provision of necessary training. At the same time, the active participation of the barangays and the continuous support from the Taytay local government have been identified as essential factors in the success of these initiatives, and are emphasized through the partnership agreement.
