Rethinking Plastic in Cebu City

Cebu City is wrapped in plastic. Lingering for years, clogging waterways, crowding landfills, and finding its way back into our communities, with a vengeance. The Mayor said it, in an article on Business Mirror dated February 21, 2026, Cebu City is facing a garbage crisis.

In a city where sari-sari stores, takeout culture, and daily convenience often mean single-use plastics, the question is no longer whether Cebu produces plastic waste, it’s what we choose to do about it in our own barangays.

But what if we stopped looking at plastic as instant trash and started seeing it as a local design opportunity?

The Tangram Project by Cebu Making Space begins with a simple but radical idea: what if plastic waste didn’t leave the community as trash, but stayed and returned as something useful?

Barangay Level Collaboration

Waste management is often discussed at the city or national scale. But real change begins closer to home: in our own barangays. The Tangram Project demonstrates that meaningful environmental action doesn’t always require massive infrastructure. Sometimes, it starts with something as simple as collecting plastic bottle caps.

Working closely with Barangay Kamputhaw, Cebu Making Space piloted a grassroots recycling initiative that transforms discarded plastic caps into colorful tangram sets for public daycare children, specifically Little Angels Child Development Center as the pilot beneficiary. Instead of sending plastic to landfills, the community participates in a circular process by collecting, cleaning, shredding, molding, and re-forming waste into educational tools.

This hyperlocal model shifts the narrative that plastic is no longer just a disposal problem. It can become a shared resource.

Transforming Waste to Learning Opportunities

The tangrams produced through the project are distributed to children aged 4–7 at the barangay daycare center. Through hands-on play, they form animals, houses, boats, and familiar community scenes. This strengthens the kids' spatial reasoning and creativity using materials that once cluttered their surroundings.

It’s a powerful metaphor. The same plastic that contributes to environmental problem can also be the solution that builds imagination and learning when placed in the right system.

More importantly, the initiative keeps value within the community. The raw material is locally sourced waste. The labor and design thinking are community-driven. The beneficiaries are local children. This closes the loop not just materially, but socially.

Designing for the Community

At its core, The Tangram Project is about care, for both people and place. By hosting workshops that involve parents, youth volunteers, educators, and barangay leaders, Cebu Making Space demonstrates how civic spaces can function as community innovation hubs. Solutions are not imposed from outside but are co-created by those who live the reality every day.

The project reframes recycling from a chore into a creative, participatory act. Residents see tangible outcomes of their waste segregation efforts. Children witness active environmental efforts. The barangay hall becomes not just an administrative office, but a design hub. More importantly, the project reframes responsibility. Instead of waiting for large-scale systems to solve Cebu’s plastic crisis, it asks: What can one barangay do?

Small Systems, Big Shifts

Cebu City’s plastic consumption will not disappear overnight. But barangay-level initiatives like The Tangram Project show that systemic change can start small, strategic, and replicable.

When communities rethink consumption patterns within their own streets and puroks, they build cultures of accountability. When waste is seen as material for re-creation rather than disposal, circular thinking becomes embedded in daily life.

The Tangram Project is not only about making toys. It is about redesigning our relationship with plastic. It is about proving that sustainability becomes powerful when it begins at home, in our own barangays, with our own hands. By focusing on barangay-scale innovation, The Tangram Project shows that sustainability doesn’t always start with policy reform or high-tech infrastructure. It can start with a table, a shredder, a 3D printed mold, and a room full of neighbors willing to rethink habits together.

Photo credits to Cebu Making Space.