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MANILA -- Battlescarred Marawi City can be rebuilt with the help of debris from the armed conflict there, a waste management expert said.

Rehabilitation work for Marawi may include the use of rubble from structures destroyed following months of fighting between government troops and terrorists, National Solid Waste Management Commission (NSWMC) Secretariat Executive Director Eligio Ildefonso said.

“Using most of that rubble will reduce the cost of rehabilitation there,” he said, adding that this would enable Marawi to literally retain part of its past.

Ildefonso noted that using the rubble is in line with the three Rs of solid waste management (SWM) -- reduce, re-use, and recycle.

“It’s still within the ambit of Republic Act No. 9003 (Ecological SWM Act of 2000),” he said.

RA 9003 promotes the three Rs to help protect the environment and reduce the volume of solid waste for disposal.

Terrorists linked to the Maute Group attacked Marawi City in May, setting off an armed conflict that ruined the capital of Lanao del Sur province.

However, after recently declaring Marawi liberated from terrorist influence, the government is already preparing to rehabilitate the city.

Ildefonso said Marawi’s rubble can be used as filling material, or to define planting strips.

“There are creative ways of using the rubble,” he said, urging the people to look into the matter instead of merely hauling the debris and disposing them in other areas.

Ildefonso is also advocating waste segregation in Marawi City.

Aside from the rubble, he said, waste there consists of various trash with potential for either recycling, re-use or composting.

Segregation will show which of the trash can still undergo such processes, he said.

The resulting recycled, re-used or composted products, can be for sale or for personal use, he noted.

RA 9003 requires the establishment of materials recovery facilities (MRFs) either in barangay (village) or barangay clusters nationwide.

“The MRF shall receive mixed waste for final sorting, segregation, composting, and recycling,” reads RA 9003.

Resulting residual wastes “shall be transferred to a long-term storage or disposal facility or sanitary landfill,” it states.