Ph ecology firms joining global ‘urban revolution’
Poised to launch the event is the Paris-based International Real Estate Federation (FIABCI), whose membership covers 100 national associations, 95 academic institutions, 2,300 companies, 40 professions and over a million individual members in five continents spanning 72 countries, including the Philippines.
FIABCI-Philippines corporate members Philippine Ecology Systems Inc. (PhilEco) and Ecodredge Inc. announced their participation in the congress, citing the major role of environment firms in urban development as imperative.
EcoDredge president Engr. Ben-Hur S. Tolentino said most cities were built by the sea or around inland waterways such that keeping a healthy urban environment would require regular dredging of rivers and estuaries for silts, precipitates and other pollutants.
As a civil engineer, Tolentino has blazed an epic trail of landmark engineering feats in the Philippines and abroad, including Iraq and Hong Kong.
“Thus, Ecodredge also wields the world’s leading state-of-the-art technologies from Royal IHC, a Netherlands-based global supplier of innovative dredging vessels and equipment for both sea and inland waterways, enabling EcoDredge to attain an unprecedented level of operating efficiencies and extremely high management standards that yield high-performance services,” Tolentino pointed out.
On the other hand, PhilEco designs, builds and operates integrated sanitary landfills, waste-water treatment facilities, buildings and roads, and other infrastructure.
Headed by civil engineer Edmund Q. Sese as president and environmental and sanitary engineer Chito Nombres as chief operating officer, PhilEco operates the 40-hectare Navotas facility, Metro Manila’s first-ever engineered sanitary landfill that accommodates up to 2,000 tons per day (tpd) of municipal solid wastes from various cities in the metropolis.
Engineers Sese said the sewage volume of Metro Manila’s western half alone could easily amount to around 1,500 million liters per day (MLD), which, if left untreated, could turn Manila Bay into Asia’s largest septic tank in the not-so-distant future.
Only a fraction of that huge volume can PhilEco’s various projects across the country put together can amount to. Such projects include the resloping and rehabilitation of the old 150-tpd capacity dumpsite in Olongapo City, the first joint sewage and septage treatment plant in Quezon City, the Kabulihan Sanitary Landfill Facility in Aklan, and the state-of-the-art 300-tpd integrated waste management and disposal facility in General Santos City, among others.
Nonetheless, Sese said PhilEco could transform sewage into reusable “gray water” for firefighting, sanitation and industrial purposes.
“Indeed, 1,500 million liters of sewage per day from western Metro alone is more than enough to demand and incite an ‘urban revolution’, which PhilEco is proud to be a part of when it unfolds at FIABCI’s World Real Estate Congress,” Nombres stressed, citing his company as having both the technology and the resources to help solve ecological problems of such nature, not only in the Philippines, but even abroad.
The congress will be held at the Marriott Hotel in Newport City, Pasay, Metro Manila on May 26-30 to generate and share solutions to urban development challenges involving pollution, health hazards and sanitation threats, climate change, global warming, rising sea levels, natural calamities, and spiralling energy costs, among many others.
“Aptly, ‘Urban Revolution’ will be launched in Manila to redefine urban development in the context of today’s challenges and gather momentum in this part of the world where it is needed most,” explained FIABCI Philippines president Architect Nestor S. Mangio in referring to the vulnerability of the country’s critical infrastructure.
“And even more aptly, the world presidency of FIABCI will be turned over to our very own Florentino Dulalia Jr., the first Filipino to assume such position,” Mangio added.
Supporting the congress are the UN-Habitat, Grant Thornton, Reed Midem, and World Urban Campaign as sponsors, with FIABCI-Philippines as the organizer. For more information on the 2020 World Congress, visit www.fiabciphilippines.org. Interested attendees may also send an email to [email protected] or call tel: +632 8633-3856, +632 3456-4511.
