DENR launches $35-M e-waste management project

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) recently launched a five-year project worth $35 million, which aims to manage the hazardous substances from electronic wastes or e-wastes.

In a statement sent to reporters, the DENR said its Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) conducted an inception workshop for the project on March 2, where measures to properly manage e-waste substances polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were discussed.

PCBs and PBDEs are highly toxic chemicals of global concern targeted for elimination under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), an international treaty to which the Philippines is a party.

The five-year project with a total budget of $35 million will be funded by the United Nations’ Global Environment Facility (GEF), Development Bank of the Philippines and private stakeholders.

The DENR said the GEF, with its implementing agency UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), has committed $6.2 million as grant for the project.

“We welcome the support of GEF and UNIDO in this project to address the management and disposal of PCBs and PBDEs,” DENR Assistant Secretary Rommel Abesamis said.

UNIDO project manager and industrial development officer Carmela Centeno said among the targeted outcomes of the project are strengthened legislation and institutional capacity and reduction and eventual elimination of POP-PBDE releases from e-wastes “to mitigate adverse potential health and environmental impacts.”

Another expected project outcome is the effective implementation of management plans of selected electric cooperatives for PCB oil and PCB-contaminated transformers, capacitors, circuit breakers and other electrical equipment.

Centeno said the project will support the safe disposal of 600 tons of PCB oil and PCB-contaminated equipment from 26 of the country’s 121 electric cooperatives, as well as 1,150 kg of PBDEs from 50,000 cathode ray tube monitors.

It will further ensure the safe disposal of around 225 tons of lead-containing glass.

To be the partners of the EMB in the project’s implementation are the National Electrification Administration and the DENR’s corporate arm, the Natural Resources Development Corp.

Also involved in the project are civil society groups EcoWaste Coalition and the Medecins du Monde and private groups Cebu Common Treatment Facility Inc. and Integrated Recycling Industries Philippines Inc. – With Rhodina Villanueva