OPINION
Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives
MERCI FERRER From Theory to Practice
In the 2022 documentary Coca-Cola und das Plastikproblem, Merci Ferrer is seen standing atop the Candau-ay dumpsite in Dumaguete, the so-called “city of gentle people” and the capital of Negros Oriental. Plastic waste mounds tower above ground level, approximately the height of a three-story building covering 5.5 acres. The year prior, she and her team successfully lobbied to have the dumpsite shut down after years of skirting environmental law.
“Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, stipulates that dumpsites need to be shut down. That was one of the requirements,” she explained in a combination of English and Tagalog. “[The dumpsite] had been violating the law since 2000.”Merci was part of the first graduating batch of Zero Waste Academy (ZWA) held in 2017, having been invited to the project by peers at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). She had built a personal network of like-minded advocates as a lifelong activist herself, starting in her youth as a champion for indigenous peoples’ rights. In 2000, she joined Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) where she grew into her role as Director of the HCWH-Asia office over the course of 12 productive years. Along the way, she had built a strong relationship with GAIA and Mother Earth Foundation (MEF).
When she moved from Manila to Dumaguete in 2015, she decided to involve herself in the city’s environmental sector. She was soon invited to be part of the founding members of Break Free From
Plastic (BFFP) in the Philippines in 2016. It was here that she got wind of a fund being raised for Zero Waste projects. She asked GAIA to help her secure the funding for Zero Waste initiatives in Dumaguete and set to work.
In 2017, she and her network of fellow Zero Waste advocates founded War on Waste - Break Free From Plastic - Negros Oriental (WoW-BFFP-NegOr), and held the city’s very first beach cleanup with a brand audit. The following year, the newly formed group co-implemented the second ZWA with the support of MEF and GAIA. At the time, WoW-BFFP-NegOr was implementing a Zero Waste Cities project in three coastal communities in the center of Dumaguete, namely Barangays Piapi, Bantayan, and Looc. These communities and the actual implementation of the Zero Waste Program served as an immersion activity for the participants of the Academy, most of whom were community- elected officials and waste workers who were to be eventually involved in the Zero Waste program implementation in these communities.
The three coastal communities demonstrated promising results. “We were able to show that you can reach a 50-60% diversion rate of waste,” she shared. “One of the communities we worked with
achieved 50% diversion in the first four months! Today, some of them have reached 60-65%.” Encouraged by their success, Merci and her team ventured into instituting Zero Waste at another community: Apo Island, a nearby marine sanctuary, a protected landscape and seascape in the municipality of Dauin. At the time, the COVID-19 pandemic had just hit the Philippines, and the team had made it onto the last boat to the island before lockdowns began. They spent the height of the pandemic conducting surveys, disseminating information about Zero Waste, and consulting with members of the community.
Prior to the Zero Waste project, Apo Island’s solid waste management system was severely lacking.
The island had no landfill, and trash was instead dumped into areas not frequented by tourists. Any
waste shipped to the mainland was unsegregated and brought by boat loads to dumpsites much like
the one in Candau-ay.
Merci’s team started introducing initiatives that helped people reduce, segregate, and find uses for their waste, such as feed for pets and compost, establishing Materials Recovery Facilities and setting up a system of collection, further segregation and disposal of waste. In 2021, Apo Island was proclaimed the Philippines’ first Zero Waste island barangay, where citizens are now actively finding solutions for solid waste-related issues.
According to Merci, her participation in the ZWA in 2017 was integral to all this success. “GAIA invited me to be part of the Zero Waste Academy, and I said yes because I didn’t know the nitty-gritty of the systems,” she recalls. “What I knew was just the basics, so the Zero Waste Academy was a huge help. I feel the Academy pushed me further to engage or venture into Zero
Waste work,” she said.
Merci shared that one of the key things she learned during the Academy was the importance of learning to work with the local government. “You really have to invite them, to collaborate with them, and to convince them that, ‘Hey people, this is your work. You have to sustain the work. We’re just here to help you, to guide you.’”
“You need to know what their knowledge base is; how conscious they are about local laws, resolutions, and ordinances; and how to create baseline data from there.”
“As a first graduate, meeting a lot of people that are knowledgeable — not only the mentors, but also the participants — it’s really a two-way theory- and-practice learning process at the Zero Waste Academy. It was valuable to me, and I’m really very thankful for it.”
Those lessons were essential to Merci’s group getting the local government to finally shut down the Candau-ay dumpsite. The site had been fined several times by the country’s Solid Waste Management Commission for violating environmental regulations, yet managed to stay operational for more than 20 years after laws were passed to require its closure. After Merci and her organization successfully lobbied to phase out the dumpsite, she and her husband, a fellow Zero Waste advocate, cooperated with the local government to develop a plan for its safe closure. They joined the city’s technical working group to study the site and determine the parameters for shutting it down with minimal harm to the environment.
This particular battle isn’t over, however. The local government has yet to act on the technical working group’s recommendations for clearing the area of hazardous leachates and methane. To add insult to injury, the administration recently purchased an incinerator to address the city’s solid waste issue.
Despite this development, Merci and her colleagues continue to fight for the environment. She is driven not just by her lifelong pursuit of social justice but also by her desire to leave behind a better world for generations to come.
“I will continue to work on Zero Waste and advocate for reforms needed not only to improve Dumaguete’s solid waste management system but also to address issues on waste workers rights and representation,” she said.
With the lessons she’s learned from the ZWA and a lifetime’s worth of advocating for environmental
protection, there are few people we can trust more than Merci to keep pushing forward.
“Republic Act 9003, or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act, stipulates that dumpsites need to be shut down. That was one of the requirements,” she explained in a combination of English and Tagalog. “[The dumpsite] had been violating the law since 2000.”Merci was part of the first graduating batch of Zero Waste Academy (ZWA) held in 2017, having been invited to the project by peers at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). She had built a personal network of like-minded advocates as a lifelong activist herself, starting in her youth as a champion for indigenous peoples’ rights. In 2000, she joined Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) where she grew into her role as Director of the HCWH-Asia office over the course of 12 productive years. Along the way, she had built a strong relationship with GAIA and Mother Earth Foundation (MEF).
When she moved from Manila to Dumaguete in 2015, she decided to involve herself in the city’s environmental sector. She was soon invited to be part of the founding members of Break Free From
Plastic (BFFP) in the Philippines in 2016. It was here that she got wind of a fund being raised for Zero Waste projects. She asked GAIA to help her secure the funding for Zero Waste initiatives in Dumaguete and set to work.
In 2017, she and her network of fellow Zero Waste advocates founded War on Waste - Break Free From Plastic - Negros Oriental (WoW-BFFP-NegOr), and held the city’s very first beach cleanup with a brand audit. The following year, the newly formed group co-implemented the second ZWA with the support of MEF and GAIA. At the time, WoW-BFFP-NegOr was implementing a Zero Waste Cities project in three coastal communities in the center of Dumaguete, namely Barangays Piapi, Bantayan, and Looc. These communities and the actual implementation of the Zero Waste Program served as an immersion activity for the participants of the Academy, most of whom were community- elected officials and waste workers who were to be eventually involved in the Zero Waste program implementation in these communities.
The three coastal communities demonstrated promising results. “We were able to show that you can reach a 50-60% diversion rate of waste,” she shared. “One of the communities we worked with
achieved 50% diversion in the first four months! Today, some of them have reached 60-65%.” Encouraged by their success, Merci and her team ventured into instituting Zero Waste at another community: Apo Island, a nearby marine sanctuary, a protected landscape and seascape in the municipality of Dauin. At the time, the COVID-19 pandemic had just hit the Philippines, and the team had made it onto the last boat to the island before lockdowns began. They spent the height of the pandemic conducting surveys, disseminating information about Zero Waste, and consulting with members of the community.
Prior to the Zero Waste project, Apo Island’s solid waste management system was severely lacking.
The island had no landfill, and trash was instead dumped into areas not frequented by tourists. Any
waste shipped to the mainland was unsegregated and brought by boat loads to dumpsites much like
the one in Candau-ay.
Merci’s team started introducing initiatives that helped people reduce, segregate, and find uses for their waste, such as feed for pets and compost, establishing Materials Recovery Facilities and setting up a system of collection, further segregation and disposal of waste. In 2021, Apo Island was proclaimed the Philippines’ first Zero Waste island barangay, where citizens are now actively finding solutions for solid waste-related issues.
According to Merci, her participation in the ZWA in 2017 was integral to all this success. “GAIA invited me to be part of the Zero Waste Academy, and I said yes because I didn’t know the nitty-gritty of the systems,” she recalls. “What I knew was just the basics, so the Zero Waste Academy was a huge help. I feel the Academy pushed me further to engage or venture into Zero
Waste work,” she said.
Merci shared that one of the key things she learned during the Academy was the importance of learning to work with the local government. “You really have to invite them, to collaborate with them, and to convince them that, ‘Hey people, this is your work. You have to sustain the work. We’re just here to help you, to guide you.’”
“You need to know what their knowledge base is; how conscious they are about local laws, resolutions, and ordinances; and how to create baseline data from there.”
“As a first graduate, meeting a lot of people that are knowledgeable — not only the mentors, but also the participants — it’s really a two-way theory- and-practice learning process at the Zero Waste Academy. It was valuable to me, and I’m really very thankful for it.”
Those lessons were essential to Merci’s group getting the local government to finally shut down the Candau-ay dumpsite. The site had been fined several times by the country’s Solid Waste Management Commission for violating environmental regulations, yet managed to stay operational for more than 20 years after laws were passed to require its closure. After Merci and her organization successfully lobbied to phase out the dumpsite, she and her husband, a fellow Zero Waste advocate, cooperated with the local government to develop a plan for its safe closure. They joined the city’s technical working group to study the site and determine the parameters for shutting it down with minimal harm to the environment.
This particular battle isn’t over, however. The local government has yet to act on the technical working group’s recommendations for clearing the area of hazardous leachates and methane. To add insult to injury, the administration recently purchased an incinerator to address the city’s solid waste issue.
Despite this development, Merci and her colleagues continue to fight for the environment. She is driven not just by her lifelong pursuit of social justice but also by her desire to leave behind a better world for generations to come.
“I will continue to work on Zero Waste and advocate for reforms needed not only to improve Dumaguete’s solid waste management system but also to address issues on waste workers rights and representation,” she said.
With the lessons she’s learned from the ZWA and a lifetime’s worth of advocating for environmental
protection, there are few people we can trust more than Merci to keep pushing forward.
Mar 7, 2023
