MANILA - An American engineering company has offered to help the government produce hollow blocks and roofs using coconut fiber and processed dirty plastic, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol said Tuesday.

The offer to put up "Eco-Roofs" and "Eco-Blocks" manufacturing plants was made days after the government allocated some P200 million for the "establishment of facilities to be owned and operated by coconut farmers," Piñol said.

The Agriculture secretary has yet to disclose if the government will accept the offer to build the plants, but Piñol said the technology could "give value to the coconut husks which are just being thrown away or burnt."

"The coconut industry produces over 5-billion husks every year, half of which are just burned or thrown away while the other half is processed into coco coir," he said.

The use of dirty plastic to bind the coconut fiber into blocks and roofs will also "help solve the country's problems with dirty plastics," Piñol said, quoting one of the American engineers who explained the process to Agriculture officials in Zamboanga.

A 2015 study named the Philippines as the world's third largest producer of plastic waste.

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