West Zone concessionaire Maynilad Water Services, Inc. (Maynilad) has already covered 626 hectares of denuded forest lands and coastal areas with trees and mangroves since 2007.

As of August, the company reported it has planted more than 692,000 indigenous trees over 585 hectares of the Ipo and La Mesa watersheds through its “Plant for Life” reforestation program.

In addition to this, Maynilad planted more than 200,000 mangrove propagules over 41 hectares of Manila Bay’s coastline covering Muntinlupa City and Malabon City; and Cavite City, Bacoor, Rosario, Noveleta and Kawit in Cavite Province.

Maynilad has also intensified its watershed monitoring activities, which boosted the survival rate of the planted trees to an average of 80 percent over the last three years.

Planting trees in denuded portions of the watersheds helps to prevent soil erosion, thus protecting the quality of water stored in the dams that supply water for millions of consumers. It also helps with carbon sequestration, which is essential to reducing the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming.

“This program enabled Maynilad to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by around 25,000 tons per year,” said Maynilad President and CEO Ramoncito S. Fernandez.

“Together with the rest of the MVP (Manuel V. Pangilinan) group of companies, we are ramping up our reforestation initiatives to attain ‘net-zero carbon’ by 2040," he added.

Maynilad taps its employees, as well as interested personnel from like-minded organizations, to participate in its annual tree-planting activity. Besides its reforestation and afforestation efforts, Maynilad has also made an initial foray into renewable energy with its recent energization of a solar farm to supply power for its La Mesa Pumping Station.

At present, Maynilad is the largest private water concessionaire in the Philippines in terms of customer base. It is a concessionaire of the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) for the West Zone of the Greater Manila Area.

Maynilad covers certain portions of Manila and Quezon City, as well as Makati (west of South Super Highway), Caloocan, Pasay, Parañaque, Las Piñas, Muntinlupa, Valenzuela, Navotas and Malabon. It also distributes water in the cities of Cavite, Bacoor and Imus, and the towns of Kawit, Noveleta and Rosario, all in Cavite Province.