Bogor mayor calls for more composting efforts

Bogor mayor calls for more composting efforts

Theresia Sufa, Bogor

Mayor Diani Budiarto has urged Bogor people to produce more
compost from organic household waste as part of the effort to
ease the municipality's waste woes.

"The administration has not enough people or facilities to
handle the waste ... we need public support, not only through
keeping the city clean and separating organic and nonorganic
waste, but also through producing compost.

"As regards its economic value, a sufficient supply of compost
can also support organic agriculture, which is now being promoted
with the city limits," Diani said during his address to a seminar
on waste management held on Thursday.

The seminar was attended by officials, the chief executives of
subdistrict and district administrations, representatives of
state forestry enterprises, environmental watchdogs, and
fertilizer producers from Bogor and the neighboring town of
Cianjur, both in West Java.

Bogor is one of the administrations, besides Jakarta and a
number of other municipalities in West Java, that has been
receiving grants to encourage compost production from the World
Bank since 2002. The money is channeled through the Office of the
State Minister for the Environment.

The Office of the State Minister has set a production target
of 60,000 tons of compost for West Java in 2005.

"If we cannot meet the target by that time, the subsidies,
which total Rp 90 billion (US$9.67 million), will be withdrawn by
the World Bank and given to another country. But if we are
successful, the subsidies will be extended until 2009," Diani
added.

Bogor has centralized its compost production at the Galuga
dump in Leuwiliang, which produces about 20 tons of compost per
day. Meanwhile, local people produce about 2,100 cubic meters of
waste per day.

Djawahir, a compost producer from Cisarua, asserted that the
subsidies had made it easier for producers to sell their compost
on the market.

He said that small-scale producers who could only produce one
or two tons of compost per day received a subsidy of Rp 350 for
each kilogram of the product, while mid-range producers with a
capacity of between two and three tons per day received Rp 300,
and large-scale producers, who produced five tons or more per
day, received Rp 200 per kilo.

"The low price of compost definitely benefits the producers,
farmers and other users," Djawahir remarked.

Another attendee at the seminar, E. Aritonang, a director of
PT Trihandal Pancatama, a company that converts compost into
granules, blamed the administration and the Office of the State
Minister for not widely disseminating information on the special
scheme to compost producers.

"Many compost producers don't even know about the subsidy,
while we need as much compost as we can get our hands on to
produce the granules, which are mostly used by mining firms," he
said.

Aritonang revealed that transnational mining company Freeport
imported 30,000 tons of granules per year from China to
neutralize tailings at their mines in Indonesia so that the land
could be restored to its original condition.

"It's ironic that this company has to import the material even
though we have great potential for producing compost here."