City could save Rp 140b if public sorts waste

City could save Rp 140b if public sorts waste

Damar Harsanto
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

The city administration could save as much as Rp 140 billion
annually from the current budget allocation of Rp 200 billion for
garbage management, if families separate their household garbage
before it is collected.

Chairwoman of the Agency for the Assessment and Application of
Technology (BPPT), Sri Bebassari, said on Sunday: "The process of
sorting waste ideally starts from home. Otherwise, the sorting
process takes the lion's share, or 70 percent, of the spending in
garbage management which is what is happening currently."

Sri said the high costs were due to time consuming separation
and the sheer number of people employed to sort the waste.

"Just figure out how long we must spend and how many people
must work to sort one truck of waste?"

Jakarta produces an average of 26,000 cubic meters of trash
per day.

Sorting trash at homes could be important in speeding up the
garbage processing time and thereby avoiding some environmental
damage, she added. Garbage needs to be sorted into organic,
inorganic and hazardous waste.

"The major problems lie with the culture, the political will
and public awareness to deal with the garbage," Sri said. She
lambasted people living in luxury housing estates who still
handled their waste poorly.

But an official at the City Sanitation Agency, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, differed with Sri's statement. The
official revealed that the trash sorting process would come to no
avail because there was no system in place to deal with the pre-
sorted trash.

"If everybody handles the trash by themselves, the pre-sorted
trash will still be mixed at Bantar Gebang dump anyway," the
official said.

The official, however, admitted that sorting the trash was
important to boost efficiency in garbage management.

"But, we only have less than Rp 200 million to finance the
campaign for the public to start sorting their own garbage at
homes," the official grumbled.

As part of the public campaign for sorting the waste, 1,930
scouts joined the campaign Sunday morning by cleaning up the
mounting garbage in the Cengkareng area of West Jakarta.

The scouts did not only pick up the trash but also sorted it
in three separate containers. Organic waste was put into green
plastic bags, inorganic trash, like plastic bottles and cans, was
placed in yellow bags while hazardous trash, including used
batteries, was put into red plastic bags.

Mansyur, a 16-year-old Scout, welcomed the program as he
reckoned it would help relieve the garbage problems in Jakarta.

"The protracted and tough talks about Bantar Gebang dump site
in Bekasi and the recent flooding which hit the capital in
January and February clearly indicate the city administration's
lack of serious concern to cope with the garbage problem," he
said.

Mansyur recalled his fresh experience on Saturday when a
number of high school students attended a workshop in observance
of Earth Day.

"I criticized the administration's poor handling of the
garbage. But our teachers took sides with the officials and they
would not let us debate the issue. They 'won', not due to
rational reasoning, but because of their authoritarian way of
thinking," he said.

The national scouts movement's chairman, Parni Hadi, said the
program, which began in March in Senen, Central Jakarta, was
aimed at educating the youngsters to process garbage into
something useful. The campaign will be continued next month in
another part of the city. Related photo on Page 8