Municipal Solid Waste Management in Iligan City, Lanao del Norte: A Single Sectorial Sustainability Simulation

Iligan City is one of the Mindanao Triangle Economic cities. It haas experienced rapid urbanization in recent years due to the economic boom. Increased consumption of resources and the associated increase in the waste generation have outweighed positive growth because of their impacts on the environment and on society. Despite the establishment of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act (RA 9003) in 2001, Waste and Waste disposal remain a problem. Factors attributing to the lack of progress on solid waste management (SWM) in the city include lack of the support from other government sectors, insufficient capacity of composting facilities, underutilization of material recovery facilities, and the weak collaboration between the government and the general public. This study is grounded on systems thinking theory, which is a non-conventional analytical approach to understanding how endogenous behavior of a Municipal SWM system evolves. System Dynamics was applied to simulate a 10-year evolution of the interdependencies between the environment, the economic, and the social aspects of the current SWM practices in Iligan City. Cooperation between the key stakeholders positively affects the overall economic and environmental impacts of SWM. Simulation results show that the greatest change could be achieved by practicing proper waste segregation, reducing residual waste at source, utilizing MRFs, and increasing the capacity of composting sites. The Iligan City SWM model archetype presents an innovative decision-support tool for LGUs invalidating their 10-year SWM plans by equipping them with an interactive management decision simulator of the status quo and inclusive policy interventions.

Keywords: RA 9003, system synamics, SWM, Solid Waste Management, MRF