The Sustina Glossary

The basurero — the waste collector — is the frontline of the Philippines' waste system, formal and informal. Long before "circular economy" entered policy language, basureros and itinerant buyers were already recovering, sorting, and reselling materials. Any serious plan for zero waste in the Philippines starts by counting the labor that already exists.

The UN agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, adopted in 2023 and in force since January 2026 — the first legal machinery for creating protected areas on the high seas. Filipino coalitions were already testing it with petitions for the waters beyond our EEZ before it took effect.

The variety of life in an ecosystem — species, genes, and habitats. The Philippines is one of only 17 megadiverse countries, holding an outsized share of the world's species on 0.2% of its land, and one of the most threatened.

Carbon captured and stored by coastal and marine ecosystems — mangroves, seagrass meadows, and tidal marshes. The Philippines holds some of Southeast Asia's most significant blue carbon stocks: mangrove forests sequester carbon up to four times faster than terrestrial forests, making their protection one of the country's highest-value climate strategies.

The roving buy-back system announced by the familiar call of "bote, diyaryo!" — collectors purchasing bottles, paper, scrap metal, and other recyclables door to door. It is the Philippines' original deposit-return scheme, entirely informal, and a working model of the reverse logistics that modern EPR systems are trying to build.

Systems where verified emission reductions are bought and sold as credits, one tonne of CO2 at a time. The Philippines is building its framework for the voluntary market now — the subject of our Decarbonization Forum coverage and multiple explainers.

Designing a product with its next life decided before its first — planning for repair, reuse, disassembly, and material recovery from the start, so waste is designed out rather than managed later. The opposite of the take-make-dispose line; the blueprint of a loop.

An economic system designed so materials stay in use — repaired, reused, remanufactured, recycled — instead of flowing from extraction to disposal. The umbrella concept behind circular design, upcycling, EPR, and much of the Sustina Lab's work.

The lead policy-making body of the Philippine government on climate change, attached to the Office of the President. The CCC coordinates and monitors national climate programs, including the National Climate Change Action Plan, and represents Philippine climate policy positions internationally.

The argument that climate change is a fairness problem: those who contributed least suffer most. It reframes emissions as accountability — the through-line from the Carbon Majors inquiry to Filipino claimants in UK courtrooms.

Courtrooms as climate venues: the landmark Commission on Human Rights inquiry, Filipino claimants against Shell, and the Carbon Majors database tracing two-thirds of industrial emissions to 90 companies. The Philippines helped invent this field.

The DOE's 2020 moratorium on new greenfield coal plants and the wider, uneven retreat from coal, oil, and gas in the Philippine power mix. The tension between phase-out pledges and new exploration contracts is a recurring Sustina beat.

The annual UN climate Conference of the Parties, and the 2015 treaty it produced: hold warming well below 2°C, pursue 1.5°C, and ratchet national pledges over time. The scaffolding every NDC hangs from.

The Philippines sits at the apex of the Coral Triangle, the global center of marine biodiversity. Warming seas trigger bleaching — corals expelling the algae they live on — turning reef health into a running climate indicator.

The work of removing carbon emissions from an economy — swapping energy sources, redesigning industry, and rethinking transport. Not one decision but thousands, which is why "pathways" matter more than pledges.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources — the national agency responsible for the Philippine environment, from forests and protected areas to mining permits and pollution rules. Parent of the Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) and the Biodiversity Management Bureau, and the single most frequent government actor in Sustina reporting.

The bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources responsible for monitoring pollution and enforcing environmental compliance — air and water quality, hazardous waste, environmental impact assessments, and the permits every major project must secure. When a factory is inspected or an environmental case is filed, EMB is usually the agency doing the work.

A problem-solving method that starts from the people affected — observe, prototype, test, repeat. The methodology behind Sustina Lab's workshops and a bridge between sustainability goals and workable products.

The Department of Energy — the agency steering the Philippine power mix, from the coal moratorium to renewable energy auctions, waste-to-energy proposals, and nuclear exploration.

Discarded electronics — the fastest-growing waste stream in the world, laced with both valuable metals and toxic materials. The Basel Convention restricts its cross-border dumping; enforcement is another matter.

The Pacific's alternating warm and cool phases, which in the Philippines translate directly into drought years and flood years — the rhythm underneath harvest failures, water rationing, and typhoon seasons.

Species found nowhere else on Earth. More than half of Philippine vertebrates and most of its plants are endemic — extinction here is global extinction, which raises the stakes of every habitat decision.

The economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables — grids, storage, financing, and policy moving together (or failing to). One of Sustina's most-used tags, and a natural glossary anchor.

The government's sign-off that a project's environmental impact has been assessed and is acceptable, required under the Philippine EIA system (PD 1586). Many of our stories turn on whether a project has one — or deserves one.

The people who stand between ecosystems and their destruction — rangers, indigenous leaders, lawyers, journalists. Global Witness has repeatedly ranked the Philippines the deadliest country in Asia for them.

The law that makes large companies responsible for the plastic packaging they put into the market. Obliged enterprises must recover or offset a rising percentage of their plastic packaging footprint — 20% in 2023, scaling to 80% by 2028 — or face fines. It is the Philippines' most direct legal push toward a circular economy for plastics.

Reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious food — the place where climate, fisheries, farm policy, and import politics collide. In the Philippines it is a coastal issue as much as an agricultural one.

The gases that trap heat in the atmosphere — chiefly carbon dioxide and methane. "Emissions" in climate coverage means these; every target, market, and lawsuit ultimately counts them.

Marketing that makes a company or product appear more environmentally responsible than it actually is — vague claims ("eco-friendly," "natural"), selective disclosure, or imagery doing work the data can't. The antidote is specificity: verifiable claims, third-party standards, and disclosures with receipts.

The International Court of Justice's 2025 advisory opinion confirming that states already carry binding legal obligations, under existing international law, to prevent climate harm. The opinion itself is advisory, not binding, but it raises the stakes of every national pledge, including the Philippines' overdue second NDC.

The Philippine Clean Air Act (RA 8749) banned waste incineration in 1999 — one of the world's few such bans. Every waste-to-energy proposal since has been an attempt to redefine, exempt, or repeal it.

The communities who have stewarded Philippine land and water longest, and the legal recognition of their territories under the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act (RA 8371). Conservation, renewable siting, and carbon projects all intersect with ancestral domain — and with the requirement of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC).

Decarbonizing without discarding people — retraining coal workers, protecting fishing communities near renewable sites, keeping energy affordable. The test of whether the energy transition deserves the word "just."

Terrain formed by dissolving limestone — caves, sinkholes, jagged spires — hosting rare species and fragile aquifers. Karst is nearly impossible to restore once quarried or built over, which is why development on it draws petitions.

The climate harms that adaptation cannot prevent — the drowned harvest, the erased coastline — and the fund that pays for them: agreed at COP27 in 2022, operationalized at COP28 in 2023. The Philippines hosts the fund's governing board, elected in 2024, making this the most personal line item in climate finance for a typhoon-belt nation.

Coastal forests that buffer storm surge, nurse fisheries, and store blue carbon at rates terrestrial forests can't match. The Philippines has lost roughly half its mangrove cover in a century; restoring it is now national policy.

Ocean zones where fishing and extraction are restricted so ecosystems can recover. The Philippines has over 1,800 MPAs — most small, many unenforced — protecting the reefs and fish stocks that coastal communities depend on.

The karst conservation area in Rizal that has become the emblem of Philippine conservation conflict — restoration work, land disputes, and attacks on its defenders, all within an hour of Manila.

The barangay-level sorting center required by RA 9003, where collected waste is separated into recyclables, compostables, and residuals. The MRF is where national policy meets the neighborhood — and where most of the system's success or failure is decided.

A greenhouse gas over 80 times more potent than CO2 in the short term, leaking from landfills, farms, and gas infrastructure. Cutting it is the fastest known way to slow near-term warming — and landfills make it a waste story.

Using ecosystems to solve human problems — mangroves as flood defense, watersheds as water infrastructure, wetlands as carbon sinks. Cheaper than concrete, but only if the ecosystems are protected long enough to work.

A country's official climate pledge under the Paris Agreement. The Philippines committed to a 75% emissions reduction by 2030 — 72.29% of it conditional on international support — and its second NDC is now overdue.

The state where the greenhouse gases a company or country emits are balanced by the amount it removes from the atmosphere. "Net" is the operative word: emissions still happen, but they are cut as deeply as possible and the remainder is neutralized through removals — not just offsets on paper.

The Philippines is routinely ranked among the top sources of ocean plastic — a ranking made in sachets, driven by poverty economics rather than carelessness. The reason EPR, zero waste, and interceptor stories share one thread.

Lands and waters legally set aside for conservation under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (expanded by the E-NIPAS Act, RA 11038) — from national parks to protected seascapes. Declaring one is a story; defending one is usually a longer story.

A protected-area category under NIPAS for coastal and marine zones of outstanding ecological value, managed for both conservation and sustainable community use — the designation Panaon Island received in 2025.

The foundation of Philippine waste law. RA 9003 mandates waste segregation at source, barangay-level Materials Recovery Facilities, the closure of open dumpsites, and local solid waste management plans. Passed by Congress in 2000 and signed into law in January 2001, it remains more ambitious than much of its enforcement — which is exactly why it keeps appearing in our reporting.

Replanting forests — and the harder discipline of keeping them alive. Native-species restoration, assisted natural regeneration, and "why tree-planting photos aren't forests" all live under this term.

A step beyond sustaining: systems designed to restore and renew the sources of energy and materials they draw on. Where sustainable design aims to do less harm, regenerative design aims to leave soil, water, ecosystems, and communities measurably better than it found them.

Energy from sources that replenish themselves — solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass. The Philippines targets a 35% renewable share of its power mix by 2030 and 50% by 2040, a transition that runs through many of our biggest stories.

The retail system built on single-use plastic pouches — shampoo, coffee, seasoning, detergent — priced for daily, low-income purchasing power. The Philippines uses an estimated 163 million sachets a day; multilayered and nearly worthless to recyclers, they are the hardest problem the EPR Law was written to solve.

RA 9003 ordered all open dumpsites closed and replaced with engineered sanitary landfills — lined, managed, and monitored. Two decades later, hundreds of open dumps persist, which is why landfill collapses and non-compliance keep making news.

The neighborhood micro-retail network — over a million small stores selling in tingi (retail portions). Sari-sari stores are the distribution engine of the sachet economy, but their density and community trust also make them the most promising sites for refill systems and reverse logistics if circular alternatives can match sachet pricing.

The three buckets of a company's carbon footprint. Scope 1: direct emissions from operations it owns (fleets, boilers). Scope 2: emissions from the electricity it buys. Scope 3: everything up and down the value chain — suppliers, logistics, product use, disposal. Scope 3 is usually the largest and always the hardest to count.

The slow-motion flood: Philippine seas are rising faster than the global average — up to triple it in some areas — redrawing coastlines, salting farmland, and deciding which communities will need to move.

Underwater grasslands that shelter juvenile fish, feed dugongs and turtles, and sequester blue carbon — the least mapped and least protected of the Philippines' three great coastal ecosystems.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's label for publicly listed companies whose revenues genuinely come from green activities — an anti-greenwashing tool whose criteria decide whether the label means anything.

A business built to solve a social or environmental problem, where profit funds the mission rather than defining it. The founders in Sustina Lab's cohorts mostly live here — between grant world and market world.

The western Pacific corridor where most of the world's tropical cyclones form — and where the Philippines sits, receiving around 20 typhoons a year. This geography is why climate adaptation is not an abstraction here: it shapes where Filipinos build, farm, insure, and evacuate, and it is the standing argument for loss-and-damage finance.

Turning waste into something of higher value — tarpaulins into bags, scrap fabric into fashion, pallets into furniture. Its quieter sibling, downcycling, converts materials into lower-value uses (plastic bottles into road filler) and buys time rather than closing the loop. Local creators have made upcycling one of the most visible faces of Philippine circularity.

The market where companies buy carbon credits by choice rather than legal mandate — the arena the Philippines is preparing to enter with its blue carbon and forest projects. Its credibility depends entirely on verification, which is where most of the fights happen.

Separating waste at source — biodegradable, recyclable, residual — required of every Philippine household and barangay by RA 9003. The single behavior the whole solid-waste system depends on.

Burning waste to generate power. Pitched as a landfill fix, contested as incineration by another name — its exemption push against the Clean Air Act is one of the sharpest policy fights on our beat.

The land area that drains rain into a shared river system — meaning what happens upslope decides water quality and flood risk downstream. Metro Manila's water security lives and dies by the Upper Marikina and Angat watersheds.

Marshes, swamps, and floodplains that filter water, buffer floods, and hold carbon. Ramsar sites are wetlands of international importance — the Philippines has 10, and its largest intact wetland is under drilling pressure.

A uniquely Philippine legal remedy: a Supreme Court writ any citizen can seek when environmental damage threatens life, health, or property across two or more cities or provinces. One of the strongest environmental legal tools anywhere.

The goal of designing waste out of a community entirely — maximizing segregation, composting, and reuse until almost nothing needs a landfill. Philippine islands and a Japanese town have both shown it's a system, not a slogan.