DENR ties up with The Ocean Cleanup

THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Thursday signed a five-year memorandum of agreement with Dutch nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup, aimed at removing waste pollution in the Pasig River and the Manila Bay.

The agreement was signed by Environment Undersecretary for Policy, Planning, and International Affairs Jonas R. Leones and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Ocean Cleanup Boyan Slat in a ceremonial signing held at the DENR’s offices in Quezon City.

The partnership would focus around deploying the organization’s well-known large-scale interceptors in the Manila Bay region, including the Pasig River system, to collect plastic waste in the area, with the first deployment scheduled to take place in Meycauayan, Bulacan in the next few weeks.

Twenty-one of these solar-powered and automated interceptors were deployed in 10 countries worldwide, with reports saying that it had collected more than 52 million kilograms of trash from aquatic environments as of April 2026.

The project would be part of The Ocean Cleanup’s 30 Cities Program, aimed to eliminate up to one-third of all plastic waste flowing from the world’s rivers into the ocean by the end of the decade.

In a statement, Environment Secretary Juan Miguel T. Cuna said that the partnership was made in direct response to urgent directives from President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. as part of the administration’s Pasig Bigyang Buhay Muli project. — Marron Joshua F. Mendoza