Senator Villar launches 1st major project as Senator Elect

 

Short on school chairs this coming school year? Why not make some out of trash? In Las Piñas City, a recycling plant can do just that. Inaugurated by the Villar Foundation on Friday, a factory in Barangay Ilaya is now turning plastic wastes into armchairs which will soon be distributed among campuses in Metro Manila.

The foundation tapped the Davao-based Envirotech Waste Recycling Inc. for the technology. “We have a lot of plastic wastes here in Metro Manila. When disposed improperly, they could clog our drainage systems and eventually cause flooding, which in turn spreads diseases,” said Senator-elect Cynthia Villar, who formally opened the facility along with her son, Las Piñas Rep. Mark Villar, and her husband, Sen. Manny Villar. “So we thought of processing these plastic wastes and coming up with something useful. That was, when I read about this technology in Davao,” Villar said. Envirotech President Winchester Lemen said the recycling plant in Las Piñas is only the second of its kind nationwide.

The first is Envirotech’s plant which has been in operation since 2010. A recycling plant would cost P5 million to P8 million to build, Lemen said. The Las Piñas plant can produce around 1,000 armchairs a month. About 24 kilos of mixed “soft plastics”—such as those used as food wrappers—are needed to make a chair, which can be fashioned to look like wooden pieces and comes with replaceable parts.

Winchester Lemen

My mission in coming up with this invention is to reuse all recyclable materials and produce different products which helps protect the environment,” Lemen, a mechanical engineer, said. Lemen said at least 10 cities and provinces in Mindanao have already been using the system, collecting 800 tons of plastic waste that was translated into almost P500,000 savings in the budget of Tagum City alone.