Cakung gets waste management center
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The Cakung slaughterhouse in East Jakarta has been equipped with a waste management center that converts all liquid waste into electric power, and most solid waste into fertilizer.
The new center, which will be inaugurated by State Minister for Research and Technology M. Hatta Radjasa on Wednesday, however, is not able to eliminate entirely all of the pollution produced by the slaughterhouse.
The final waste product, which is dumped into a nearby river, is not totally environmentally friendly, as its chemical oxygen demand (COD) is still some 900 to 1,000 parts per million (ppm), which is higher than the tolerable level of 100 ppm demanded by the Office of the State Minister for the Environment.
"We are able to reduce the COD from some 3,000 ppm to about 900 to 1,000 ppm. If we wanted to reduce it to the tolerable level, it would require further processing and more funds," Djoko Padmono, a field coordinator for waste treatment at the Cakung slaughterhouse, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
The waste at the slaughterhouse is converted through an anaerobic process. For the COD to be reduced to tolerable levels would require it be treated through an aerobic process. However, there is no funding for this, according to Djoko.
Indriyati, a coordinator for the waste treatment project, said the government would have to budget more funds for the slaughterhouse to reduce the COD to tolerable levels.
She did not specify how much money would be needed, but said it was less that the total investment in the current project, which is 2.3 million DM or some Rp 8 billion, which came from a grant from Germany's Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau.
The waste management center, which began trial operations two months ago, was developed by the Assessment and Application of Technology Agency (BPPT) and sponsored by a number of German organizations.
"We now treat some 150 cubic meters of liquid waste here in a day. It is still below the capacity as our machine, which can treat up to 300 cubic meters of waste," Djoko said.
Djoko said he did not know the amount of electric power produced by the machine, known as the Anaerobic Digester, but he said if operated to its full capacity it could produce some 35 KWh of electric power.
The waste treatment center can manage some 40 tons of solid waste per day, which is converted into some 13.3 tons of compost fertilizer, according to Djoko.
Not all of the solid waste from the slaughterhouse is treated in the waste treatment center, with a large part of it still managed traditionally by scavengers.
Djoko said the 40 tons of solid waste treated in the center came from between 150 and 200 cows slaughtered daily at the slaughterhouse, and also from the stables where hundreds of cows are kept before they are slaughtered.
The solid waste from another 100 to 150 slaughtered cows is handled traditionally by scavengers.
Indriyati said it would be difficult to take over the management of all the solid waste from the slaughterhouse because many people would lose their source of income.
"We should take over in stages so that there will be no problems," Indriati said.
The slaughterhouse is run by city administration-owned company PD Dharma Jaya.