Lessons From Exploring Waste Streams

For the success of our venture, mapping our waste management and identifying waste streams is integral to the development of our materials and the tests we choose to run. With that in mind, we focused a lot of time in the past few days visiting local waste departments in the government, research institutions, and waste management initiatives.

We visited the Quezon City Department of Sanitation and Cleanup Works (DSCW) to meet with Mr. Richard Santuille, the officer-in-charge, Mr. Marvin Lawrence Bagan, and Ms. Mikaela Bonilla. DSCW is responsible for waste collection and enforcing waste segregation into recyclables, biodegradables, and non-biodegradables. This meeting offered us a deeper understanding of waste streams, which will help shape the design of a product that seamlessly biodegrades within these waste streams. 

Meeting with Quezon City DSCW

The Market Development and Administration Department invited our team to see their biodigester / composting machine at the Kamuning Public Market. When we visited, we saw a large pile of food waste, the biodigester, and the soil-conditioner output. The staff we spoke with, Ed and Raquel, said they had never tried to put bioplastics through the machine as they separate all the plastic, or plastic-looking, items before going into the machine. As Quezon City is planning to add 9 more biodigesters to the rest of the public markets, market waste is not the best avenue to source waste for our raw material. This visit also showed us that implementing our product in a market may not be the best as our product would probably be incorrectly segregated as plastic and go to a landfill.

Kamuning Public Market's food waste is collected in a pile on the ground in front of their biodigester.

Additionally, we received a tour of the UP Diliman Environment Management Office (DEMO) and their grounds. At DEMO, biodegradable food waste from households and restaurants on campus is collected and composted using traditional composting methods. Furthermore, DEMO is currently experimenting to compost biodegradable bagasse food containers used on campus. We look forward to the results of this experiment as it will guide us in ensuring that our product composts effectively through both traditional methods and vermicomposting. We plan to stay in contact with DEMO to learn from their experiences and gain valuable insights.

DEMO's experimental bagasse composting with their garden in the back.

In order to better understand what streams of waste are available, we went to talk to agricultural experts to get another perspective on what opportunities they saw with a project like ours. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to visit the University of Philippines Los Baños which has a focus on agricultural research. After presenting AgriWrap and explicitly mentioning the specific challenges we are facing, we received feedback from experts with various agricultural backgrounds. They brought up the fact that agricultural goods need packaging, and a lot of produce is wasted as it travels throughout the Philippines. Many researchers at UP Los Baños are working on coatings that would extend the shelf life of produce, which could easily be combined with biodegradable packaging materials. Creating a product that has functionality like this would be beneficial to compete against much cheaper plastics. Also, the experts at Los Baños gave us insight into waste streams, and which types of agricultural waste are least utilized.

Matt O. and Max B. at UP Los Baños

With the end of fieldwork soon approaching, we aim to pack in as much as we can for the last couple of days.