Bojo River
The Bojo River is an ecotourism site found in the town of Aloguinsan, south western part of Cebu in the Philippines. Image: Cebu Provincial Tourism Office Facebook Page

Polluted paradise: how plastic trash and wastewater imperils lives and biodiversity in the Philippines’ top tourism draw

Cebu is projected to generate the most solid waste among all provinces in the country by 2025. As the summer season begins, how can the province overcome its mounting trash problem, driven by overtourism in the post-pandemic era?

Scattered sachets, water bottles and plastic bags cling to the branches of mangroves in the Olango Island Wildlife Sanctuary. This internationally recognised wetland located in Cebu, a bustling tourist province in the Visayas island group of the Philippines, is a crucial habitat for migratory birds. It is a nationally protected area where human settlement and waste dumping are prohibited.

Months of analysis of government data by Eco-Business show that Cebu is projected to continue producing the highest amount of waste in the country until 2025, potentially overwhelming tourist destinations with both plastic waste and untreated wastewater.

From 2013 to 2022, the Philippines saw a steady rise in tourism, with a total of 45.4 million foreign tourists. Cebu was the archipelago’s most visited province in the past decade with over 35 million tourists. The industry’s peak in 2019 brought in 8.2 million foreign tourists, supported 6 million tourism jobs, and contributed nearly 13 per cent to the national gross domestic product (GDP).

But the 2020 pandemic led to a sharp fall in tourism in the Philippines: foreign arrivals dropped to 1.4 million and every one in five tourism jobs disappeared. Tourism’s GDP contribution saw a 1.9 percentage-point decline from 2013 to 2022. 

To achieve sustainable tourism growth after the pandemic, experts and activists called on Cebu and the rest of the Philippines to put the brakes on unregulated mass tourism and the release of plastics and sewerage into local water bodies in favour of a more eco-friendly and inclusive approach to tourism.

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