DBP funds Cebu ecozone’s waste treatment facility

MANILA  -Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) is scaling up its support for government efforts on waste management and greening of ecozones with a P66.7-million loan facility.

The funding support was granted to Pacific Mactan Renewable Environmental Systems Inc. (PMRESI) to help build the only fully integrated waste treatment and disposal facility at the Mactan Economic Zone I (MEZ) in Cebu.

In particular, the loan will partially finance the construction of a 2,000-square meter hazardous waste treatment facility and the acquisition of waste water treatment equipment.

DBP president and chief executive Michael de Jesus said the state-run bank’s support to PMRESI was made under the flagship Sustainable Waste Management for Enhanced Environmental Protection Financing (Sweep) Program.

PMRESI is the local subsidiary of Canada-based EnEco WTE Pacific Inc., which pioneered in the Philippines a waste gasifier technology called Thermal Oxidation Process System (Tops).

As of April 2023, DBP has approved a total loan amount of P435.6 million under the Sweep program.

The Sweep program is designed to help establish a smart waste management and energy recovery system for more than 200 firms within the MEZ area.

According to De Jesus, the MEZ waste treatment facility will benefit more than 200 firms that operate in the ecozone.

The facility is the first to employ the Tops gasifier technology that uses a thermal gasification/oxidation process to decompose carbon-based components of waste and reduce its volume by 97 percent. INQ

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