Every journey begins somewhere
Every morning, Gregorio Sarmiento begins the same routine.
For years, the 65-year-old sanitation worker from Barangay La Huerta in Parañaque City has walked the same streets, hauling sacks of garbage from homes, sidewalks, and collection points before dump trucks arrive to take them away.
By afternoon, he has already cleared piles of waste.
By the next morning, there is more.
“Karga uli. Maghapon, walang katapusan, he said.” (“We haul it away, then do it all over. The work never ends.”)
The work never ends.
At first glance, it would be easy to assume that the garbage surrounding this coastal community is the result of poor waste collection. But residents tell a different story.
Barangay garbage collectors pass through the neighborhood every day. Streets have assigned collection routes. Sweepers clean roads morning and afternoon. Dump trucks collect waste every night.
“May mga kanya-kanyang ruta ang mga basurero,” (“The garbage collectors each have their own assigned routes.”) said resident Jessica Parochel, who has lived in Barangay La Huerta for a decade. “Hinahakot ’yan araw-araw.” (“They haul it away every day.”)
Yet despite an organized collection system, garbage continues to accumulate, particularly after heavy rains and high tide. Plastic bottles, food wrappers, Styrofoam, driftwood, and other debris appear along riverbanks and floodwaters as if delivered overnight.
Residents know why.
Much of the waste did not come from their neighborhood.
It came from somewhere upstream.
The rivers brought it here.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Even communities with functioning waste collection systems continue to bear the consequences of garbage discarded far beyond their borders.
That raises a larger question.
If garbage is collected every day, why does the problem never seem to end?
Where does all of this waste come from?
And why does it always end up here?
The answer stretches far beyond Barangay La Huerta.
Following the current
The garbage removed from streets and waterways does not simply disappear. Plastic that escapes collection enters drainage canals, esteros, creeks, and rivers before flowing toward Manila Bay. Along the way, tides and currents funnel much of that debris into one place: the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park or the LPPWP.
Located along the southwestern coast of Metro Manila, where the cities of Las Piñas and Parañaque meet Manila Bay, the LPPWP serves as one of the capital region’s last remaining mangrove ecosystems. It lies at the mouths of rivers draining portions of Metro Manila and Cavite before emptying into Manila Bay.
Its location makes it both ecologically valuable and exceptionally vulnerable.
The wetland protects coastlines from erosion and storm surges, filters water before it reaches Manila Bay, serves as a nursery for fish and other marine life, and provides habitat for migratory birds traveling thousands of kilometers.
The LPPWP is not only Metro Manila’s last remaining mangrove forest and wetland of its kind, but also stands as one of just two officially protected areas in the capital region—the other being the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center in Quezon City. This unique status underscores the park’s ecological significance and highlights the urgent need to safeguard its fragile habitats.
In 2007, the LPPWP—then formally established as LPPCHEA—transitioned from an unregulated coastal area into a legally protected, internationally recognized ecological sanctuary under Presidential Proclamation No. 1412, years after it was officially recognized as protected area through through the Expanded NIPAS Act of 2018 (RA 11038).
The park faces several threats, including urbanization, habitat degradation, and the continuing pressure of coastal development. But among its most immediate and visible challenges is solid waste pollution, according to LPPWP Superintendent Christopher Villarin.
As our team conducted a survey of the protected area, striking signs of solid waste pollution emerged before us. Plastics, bottles, abandoned furniture, campaign tarp from the past election, and various other debris littered the shoreline, weaving through and disrupting the delicate habitats of native vegetation—most notably, the resilient mangroves struggling amid this intrusion.
Every cleanup operation removes truckloads of trash, yet every tide delivers another.
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park) 
Despite regular clean-up operations by various groups and volunteers, the wetland manager says the flow of trash into the LPPWP never seems to end. (📸 Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park)
Despite its protected status and rich biodiversity, when visitors arrive, their first impressions are often shaped not by the park’s birds or mangroves, but by the persistent presence of solid waste. This stark reality serves as a reminder of the environmental challenges facing the wetland and the importance of ongoing conservation efforts.
As what we witness, the contrast is striking.
Wayback in 2013, the wetland became the Philippines’ sixth Ramsar Wetland of International Importance. Countries nominate sites for this status based on ecological criteria like supporting endangered species or providing habitat for migratory birds.
This global recognition highlights its ecological importance and increases the duty to conserve it for future generations. As a Ramsar site, the Philippines has the obligation to protect the wetland, preserve its habitats, manage environmental impacts, involve local communities, and report regularly on conservation efforts.
Further strengthening its protection, the area was included under the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System Act five years later, cementing its status as a critical habitat.
For LPPWP Superintendent Villarin, the essence of a protected area is clear: it exists to conserve and prevent its ecosystem from being degraded.
“It is a place that is conserved to prevent its ecosystem from being degraded.”
Despite these legislative milestones, efforts to further extend and strengthen the park’s protection recently met challenges. A renewed legislative push was vetoed by President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., who cited concerns about overlapping mandates and potential conflicts with existing laws governing protected areas. This outcome illustrates the complex nature of environmental governance, even for sites recognized internationally.
Indeed, no law or global commendation can stop the relentless flow of garbage carried into the park by water.
As marine scientist and mangrove expert Dr. Jurgenne Primavera notes, the story of the wetland began long before it received international recognition.
Back in the 1970s, the area was simply known as the Tambo Mudflats, part of the Manila-Cavite Coastal Road reclamation project. Its ecological value was largely unrecognized until conservation groups successfully opposed privatization plans, leading to its declaration as the country’s first Critical Habitat in 2004.
“As appreciation for wetlands increased over the decades,” Primavera explained, “people began to understand their importance.”
This evolving understanding has transformed how people view wetlands, reinforcing the need for active conservation and highlighting the ongoing tension between recognition and real-world challenges.
Mangroves are no longer seen as idle swamps or vacant coastal land. They are natural infrastructure.
Their roots stabilize coastlines, reduce wave energy, trap sediments, improve water quality, and provide breeding grounds for fish, crabs, and shrimp that support coastal fisheries. During powerful storms, healthy mangrove forests can lessen the impact of storm surges and flooding, protecting nearby communities while supporting biodiversity.
Ironically, the same roots that make mangroves so effective at trapping sediments also make them efficient at trapping plastic.
And this plastic pollutants could eventually kill them. Mangroves have this pencil-like aerial roots called pneumatophores that protrude above the mud to allow mangrove trees to breathe in oxygen-poor soils. As plastic bags, fishing lines, and other debris accumulate around these roots, they can smother young seedlings, restrict water flow, trap additional sediments and waste, and make it more difficult for new mangroves to establish. Over time, the growing blanket of debris can alter the habitat used by fish, crabs, mollusks, and migratory birds that depend on the wetland.
For environmental managers, that creates an almost impossible task.
“The location of the protected area is a catchment point,” said Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Assistant Secretary Norlito Eneran.
Waste discarded across Metro Manila and nearby parts of Cavite enters waterways and eventually drifts toward the wetland.
“Even if we remove the garbage every single day, the next day there is more,” he said. “People continue throwing waste into our waterways, so it keeps washing into the wetland.”
Villarin describes the problem even more specifically.
The park sits at the mouths of the Las Piñas, Parañaque, and Zapote rivers. Problems in waste management anywhere upstream can eventually become problems inside the protected area.
“If garbage is thrown into those rivers,” he said, “it will end up in the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park.”
Walking on the sandy beach feels like walking on a sanitary landfill due to the overwhelming amount of trash surrounding the shore. 
LPPWP is home to the most bizarre and unexpected trash, including this motorcycle topbox that has drifted ashore from the protected area. 
Trash is scattered across the area, as if this part of Manila Bay were not a protected habitat for important plant species and migratory birds. 
Plastic bottles, sachets, and other household waste threaten mangrove growth by covering their pneumatophores, the aerial roots that absorb oxygen. When blocked, the mangroves struggle to breathe and survive. 
Every turn reveals more plastic waste and other discarded trash across the wetland.
The journey that no one sees
The wetland is not creating the problem.
It is revealing it.
To understand why cleanup efforts never seem enough, one only needs to imagine the journey of a single plastic bag.
It is discarded along a roadside.
Rain carries it into a drainage canal.
The canal empties into a creek.
The creek joins a river.
The river flows into Manila Bay.
The tide pushes it back toward the coast.
Finally, the nonbiodegradable plastic bag becomes tangled in mangrove roots inside the wetland.
By then, the person who threw it away is long gone.
The garbage has simply changed location.
That is exactly what Mang Gregorio sees whenever heavy rain falls.
The water rises.
The current strengthens.
And another wave of garbage arrives.
The residents clean.
The sanitation workers haul.
The dump trucks collect.
Then the rivers deliver more.
For Barangay La Huerta, the fight against garbage is not just about keeping streets clean. Located less than two kilometers from the LPPWP, this community forms an essential link between urban development and delicate natural environments. Decisions made upstream significantly impact the downstream ecosystem, and as one of the communities nearest to LPPWP, they face particularly substantial challenges. Despite their ongoing efforts, residents acknowledge that their actions alone are insufficient. The struggle against waste is not solely theirs; it is a shared responsibility for everyone connected to the water system sustaining their community.
It is about living at the end of a journey that begins somewhere else.
Every journey even with trash traces back to people
And as we continue talking to Mang Gregorio, we stumble of his story of him in his years of watching garbage drift downstream that maybe given him a sense of humor about a problem that rarely gives him a reason to laugh.
He jokingly calls people who toss trash into the river “flying saucer” throwers, watching plastic bags and bottles sail through the air before landing in the water. He also laughs about people who simply “de-plas,” his playful take on “de-flush,” as if rivers could simply carry garbage away.
But beneath the humor lies years of frustration.
“Unang-una, ’di mo makikita kung saan galing ang basurang ’yan.”
(First of all, you can never really tell where that garbage came from.)
Perhaps that is the greatest challenge facing the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park.
Everyone can see where the garbage ends up. Too few ever see where its journey begins.
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