Only 105 tons? Dinagyang 2026 beats trash forecast

By Joseph Bernard A. Marzan

The 2026 Dinagyang Festival generated significantly less waste than Iloilo City officials initially projected.

General Services Office head Neil Ravena said Monday, Jan. 26, that only 105 metric tons of waste were collected during the festival’s main weekend from Jan. 23 to 25.

The figure was well below the 300 tons Ravena projected ahead of the festivities.

He said the initial projection, announced Jan. 13, was based on the 260 tons collected during last year’s celebration, with an expected increase of 40 to 60 tons this year.

Ravena said the final volume could still reach around 130 tons, as city personnel continued post-event cleanup as of Monday morning.

He added that garbage trucks operated by J.S. Layson & Co. Inc., the city’s waste contractor, can haul about 2.5 to 3 tons per trip, placing Dinagyang 2026’s total waste output at a maximum of 43 truckloads.

The lower tonnage was attributed partly to vendors shifting from bamboo or wood stalls to collapsible tents, which weigh significantly less.

Despite the reduced weight, Ravena noted that the overall volume of waste increased, likely due to a higher share of plastic-based materials.

He said plastic waste, particularly polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, made up a large portion of the festival trash.

Waste pickers at the city’s Central Material Recovery Facility in Barangay Calajunan were able to recover a significant number of PET bottles from the haul.

“I saw that there were a lot of PET bottles, and it would be bad if we just direct it to the landfill, so we have to recover this, and we are targeting to divert around 50 percent of the waste collected,” Ravena told a local radio station on Monday.