Local startup Circula Recoon has recently announced new public sector partnerships, following the launch of their app Trash Panda, a waste collection system that features digitized tracking and monitoring. By screening which wastes are suitable for recycling and harvesting them efficiently, Trash Panda is able to facilitate the repurposing of waste set for disposal into valuable resources. According to the team, they hope to begin implementing regular waste collection schedules across different cities around the Philippines soon.
Circula Recoon Co-founders Marie Sapuay and Francis Dimalanta met as graduate school classmates at the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning. Both had been pursuing different career paths—Dimalanta as an architect and Sapuay as a software developer—but they soon discovered they shared a passion for improving communities and cities.
“Contributing to urban planning and development in the Philippines can be frustrating in the sense that consultants have no guarantee that their recommended plans for the city and municipal governments will be put into action,” Sapuay said. “Having researched the need for a circular economy for a more sustainable nation, we founded Circula Recoon because we could not wait for the action to happen eventually. Since the waste problem in the Philippines will only grow more complicated as time passes, we felt the urgency to specialize in improving waste management through digitized waste recovery.”
Due to a lack in waste collection technology in the Philippines, waste has been collected primarily for disposal. But according to Sapuay, as much as 80% of the waste generated in the Philippines can be repurposed into valuable resources. “Trash Panda changes that by making such collection services available on a pay-per-kilogram transaction scheme depending on the weight of waste collected and transported,” Sapuay said.
In 2019, the Metro Manila Development Authority reported that despite a $35 million budget for waste disposal, the authority failed to properly deal with the roughly 52,000 cubic meters of trash generated by the capital the year prior. Estimates from the MMDA hold that, at the current rate of waste generation, landfills across the capital will be full and unusable within the next 15 years. With Trash Panda, Sapuay and Dimalanta offer a viable alternative that won’t exceed city budgets. “We see the market opportunity for waste recovery for the entire Philippines to amount to around $1.05 billion,” Sapuay said.
Circula Recoon has already met with several LGUs, including Baguio City, in order to establish regular collection schedules. Trash Panda estimates that they will be able to serve around 100,000 to 500,000 individuals per city or municipality. Eventually, they hope to provide their services to more highly populated cities as their technology continues to develop. “In essence, we will be doing the ‘heavy lifting’ of waste collection,” Sapuay said. With Trash Panda’s digitized tracking and monitoring of the collection process, LGUs can focus on their administrative activities. Trash Panda will be announcing the additional LGUs they’ve partnered with in the near future.
“We envision a time when landfills will simply not be needed anymore because it would mean that the final disposal of waste will become an obsolete option,” Sapuay said.
“The Philippines is one of many countries to pledge to work towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030,” she said. “By focusing on solutions to waste problems as a cross-cutting development issue, we will be able to help cities progress towards achieving several of the waste-related environmental, social, and economic goals. By actively providing waste collection and recovery services to cities with the goals and the 2030 deadline in mind, it is not a far reality for a zero-landfill future and a stable circular economy.”