Editor’s Note
Letter from the Editor
Masthead
Anton AndresWriter JeepneysAnton Andres has loved cars all his life and has covered the automotive industry for over a decade, both locally and internationally. He has seen the world of mobility evolve firsthand, and has witnessed how automakers have been moving forward with all the environmental challenges that surround them. He also believes that loving cars and being environmentally responsible don’t have to be mutually exclusive.Read “When Jeepneys Outlive their Drivers” → Denise Gonsalves
Denise GonsalvesWriter CoconutsDenise Gonsalves is Editor at Sustina. She is a Manila-based journalist, editor, and science communicator covering climate and the environment. A former travel and lifestyle writer, she now reports on biodiversity, oceans, and climate justice. Her byline has appeared in Asian Scientist Magazine and GRID Magazine.Read “The Women Waiting in Coconut Country” → Sofia Guanzon
Sofia GuanzonWriter CacaoSofia Guanzon is a freelance writer and researcher based in Manila, Philippines. Her work explores the intersections between political engagement, art, and climate in the digital space, with a strong focus on women and sustainability.Read “What the Agriculturists Leave Behind” → Jessie Jiang
Jessie JiangWriter Ukay-ukayJessie Jiang is a Manila-based writer and former TIME Magazine reporter who writes about sustainability, circular systems, and the curious ways people use, reuse, and rethink the things around them. She is also the founder of Basically Borrowed, a community that brings sustainability into everyday life through stories, conversations, and events.Read “The Eternal Business of Ukay-ukay” → Pauline Nacar
Pauline NacarWriter SachetsPauline Nacar is Editor at Sustina, where she monitors the sustainability media landscape of the Philippines. She writes explainers with a focus on business, policy, and community initiatives. Previously, Nacar was an associate editor at adobo Magazine, where she covered the advertising and creative industry in the Asia-Pacific region.Read “The Barangay that Lives With Plastic” → Marco Sumayao
Marco SumayaoWriter E-wasteMarco has been a freelance writer for most of his career, with occasional stops at the likes of Vibal Publishing House, Summit Media, and adobo Magazine. While his bread and butter mostly revolves around food writing these days, he’ll jump on any chance to cover the arts, do profiles on people, and write in support of his advocacies. If you ever run into him, ask about his graphic novel-in-progress.Read “No Country for Old Phones” → Nina Unlay
Nina UnlayWriter JeepneysNina Unlay is Co-founder and Editorial Director of Sustina, previously the editor-in-chief of GRID Magazine and editorial director of adobo Magazine. She covers sustainability, socioeconomic issues, and culture, with a byline that appears in publications like Mongabay, Business Insider, Inquirer, Manila Bulletin, Esquire, and others.Read “When Jeepneys Outlive their Drivers” → 
Colin DancelPhotographer CoconutsColin Dancel is a Filipino image-maker and photographer. Led by curiosity and a primal desire to create, her works often depict beauty born of persistence and imprints of movement—she’s drawn to work that breathes beyond the confines of a page, challenges the notion of stillness, and addresses a yearning for tactility.Read “The Women Waiting in Coconut Country” → Lisa Marie David
Lisa Marie DavidPhotographer SachetsLisa Marie David is a Filipina freelance visual journalist with an interest in documenting issues concerning women, children, and the environment. She is a regular contributor to Reuters and Bloomberg and had her work published in CNN, Libération, among others. At present, she is working simultaneously between assignments and personal documentary work. She is a member of Women Photograph and Diversify Photo.Read “The Barangay that Lives With Plastic” → Martin San Diego
Martin San DiegoPhotographerUkay-ukay CacaoMartin San Diego is an independent Filipino documentary photographer. He photographs the different manifestations of resistance: from subtle acts of remembering, to established armed movements. Martin works for The Washington Post on long-form stories in the Philippines, and has been funded and published by National Geographic.Read “The Eternal Business of Ukay-ukay” →Read “What the Agriculturists Leave Behind” → Dominic Pamatmat
Dominic PamatmatPhotographer E-wasteDominic Pamatmat is a Manila-based travel, culture, and commercial photographer. He’s captured fine art, local cultures, social and environmental justice as well as other artistic and commercial work. His images have appeared in Rolling Stone Philippines, Vogue Philippines, and Spot PH.Read “No Country for Old Phones” → Jilson Tiu
Jilson TiuPhotographer JeepneysJilson Tiu is a Manila-based photographer and photojournalist. His work spans social, environmental, cultural, and culinary narratives, documenting moments that reflect heritage and identity—from street life to rural scenes.Read “When Jeepneys Outlive their Drivers” → The Waste Issue
Six things going to waste
We owe this issue largely to the coconuts—or more specifically, the coconut people.
If I had to name one in particular, it would be Charmaine Cu-Unjieng, the co-founder of NaturLoop. Charmaine carries around a board made of coconut waste, pulling it out whenever a demonstration is needed as evidence that there is a viable product to be found among the husks. I once passed her waiting in line for dinner, talking to a colleague, and could still make out the word “coconut.” She does not let up.
Last year, Sustina hosted a series of events, and each one had at least one person like Charmaine, enthusiastically telling us about the “mountains of coconut husks” left either to burn or rot. They knew with a fierce certainty that something needed to be done about these husks.
So successful were the coconut people in infecting us with their fascination that at the beginning of our first editorial meeting for this project, the whiteboard simply read: “Coconuts?”
These mountains of coconut husks—which amount to 15 billion a year, as you will read in Denise Gonsalves’ excellent piece—are considered trash. Waste. Basura. But to the coconut people, they are precious. Strong, precious material worth saving.
The Filipinos who are creating things out of waste—or what is typically waste to the rest of us—are relentless in their resourcefulness. But as you will read in this issue, most Filipinos are.
The coconut husk that Charmaine and her team turn into boards has been bunot—used to wax floors—to most of us for as long as we can remember. In this issue, you will also read about how ukay-ukay and the jeepney were post-war inventions, born out of a need to survive in a time of extreme scarcity.
Today, we have an overabundance of trash. Our landfills are filled beyond capacity. And whether that trash spends its lifetime in a landfill largely depends on what happens next. On whether we see it as trash or as coconuts.
The Waste Issue is a collection of stories made possible by a grant from Syli and climateXchange. Our goal was to create a story-driven map of circular solutions in the Philippines, which you can now peruse here. The assumption behind this initiative is that circular solutions already exist, but are hard to find. Whether we have made an impact depends on whether this helps anyone—like you—find them
In these stories, you will read about how often it is a struggle to put the “economy” into a circular economy. In Quezon, a trained workforce is ready, but the facility’s lights are still off. In Greenhills, secondhand phones cost the same as replacement parts. Across the board, the people we talk to tell us—in so many words—that we are not valuing our trash enough.
How might we change that? How might we imagine a world where waste is not inevitable, but instead a problem of design?
Whatever the question stirs in you, we hope the takeaway is that there are people who keep trying.
So, consider this a thank you to the coconut people for expanding the limits of our imagination. To the founders, the waste workers, the survivors making up the informal economy that was here long before the word “circular” was placed into our lexicon.
— Nina UnlayEditorial Director