TURNING TRASH INTO CASH
A 30-year veteran of various landfills and wastes consolidators, Gloria Bandojo stands proud amid her unconventional workplace in Payatas, Quezon City—a dumpsite that she herself says is “dirty and smelly,” with no hint of disdain. After all, it is this dumpsite that has enabled her to send her eight children to school.
“Being a garbage collector is an honorable profession,” says Bandojo in Filipino. “I do not want to beg, rely on others or steal just to survive. Besides, without us, garbage in Metro Manila would be a mountain full.”
In San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, Marianita Maraat is in a similar situation. A solo parent of five children age eight to 16 years-old, Maraat could only look back on how miserable their lives were. She shared, “I used to worry how I would get my children and myself through the day.” Having learned upcycling skills from the City Environment and Natural Resources Office (Cenro), she collects plastic packaging and transforms them into wallets and bags.
she earns about P17,000 a month especially during the Christmas season. She also supports other waste pickers by providing a kilo of rice in exchange for a kilo of clean, dry plastic wrappers, which she uses for her trade.
Bandojo and Maraat are just two of the hundreds of ordinary Filipinos—usually female breadwinners—who play a valuable role in the sustainable waste management program of Republic Cement’s resource recovery arm ecoloop. By partnering with local governments, waste consolidators and manufacturing companies that utilize plastic packaging, Republic Cement seeks to close the loop and prevent plastic waste from ending up in landfills and oceans.
Ecoloop hauls and converts most of these waste through a revolutionary cement manufacturing process called co-processing. It involves the recovery of residual minerals and energy from the wastes, which are then used in the processing of cement itself.
“Making a difference in the environment is what makes me wake up in the morning with energy to start my day,” shared ecoloop director Angela Edralin.