I went on a holiday to Philippines for 3 weeks in January. On of the days I scheduled a trip to the infamous dumpsite of Payatas where hundreds were killed due to an enormous pile of garbage collapsing in the year 2000. Unfortunately I was only able to take pictures from the inside of our car with the windows rolled up. The air was not safe to breathe as Mount Taal has just erupted days after the visit to Payatas.
The disaster in 2000 left thousands homeless. This dumpsite was clearly neglected by the government in the Philippines. The disaster would have been avoided if the government imposed proper rules and regulations for managing the city’s waste. The dumpsite was closed for a couple of weeks but had to re-open because they had ‘nowhere to put the garbage from the city’ and ‘health and safety of the people in the city was at risk’ due to the uncollected garbage after the disaster.
Today it is still the main dumpsite and ‘recycling center’ for the city. They’ve imposed rules of no piling of garbage of ‘incredible heights’ and have also built walls so that the garbage is not seen from the public. You can see from the photos I’ve taken than I only managed to get a glimpse of the garbage from opened gates.