City signs agreement on garbage processing
City signs agreement on garbage processing
Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The city administration signed two memoranda of understanding
(MoU) on Tuesday with two local companies which are working
cooperation with two North American companies. They will invest a
total of US$378 million to process the city's garbage into ethyl
alcohol, plastic raw material and fertilizer.
One of the companies, PT Putra Bakti Mahkota will invest $360
million to develop a plant on a 30-hectare site in Marunda, North
Jakarta.
The other company PT Interindo Global plans to build a plant
with an investment of $18 million on a 4.5-hectare plot in Tegal
Alur, West Jakarta.
City Governor Sutiyoso hoped that the plants could be
operational by next year to anticipate the closure of the city's
main garbage dump in Bantar Gebang, Bekasi.
Jakarta first used the dump in 1986, but Bekasi closed it on
Dec. 5, 2001 due to environmental problems. It was later reopened
and a new MoU was signed on Jan. 31, allowing Jakarta to use it
until December 2002. It could be extended for another year.
According to the MoUs that were signed Tuesday, the
administration is obliged to submit 2,000 tons of garbage a day
to PT Putra and 1,000 tons of garbage to PT Interindo.
PT Putra already owns the Marunda property while the
administration plans to give Tegal Alur to PT Interindo.
PT Putra, in close cooperation with New Jersey-based Ecoplanta
Europe Group and Companies, plans to use the Pyrolyzes Recovery
System to process organic trash into ethyl alcohol.
It plans to export some of the ethyl alcohol and market the
rest domestically.
Meanwhile, PT Interindo, which obtained a license from
International Bio Recovery, Vancouver, Canada, will utilize a
process called Auto Thermophilic Aerobic Digestion (ATAD) to
change organic trash into solid and liquid fertilizer.
For the most part both companies plan to process the waste in
closed plants, much like a large warehouse, to minimize foul
odors and environmental damage to the surrounding neighborhoods.
The trash will be separated by about 500 workers into organic
and non-organic trash before being processed.
Much of the non-organic waste will be recycled into plastic
pellets for later use in the manufacture of plastic goods.
Acting head of the City Sanitation Agency Irzal Jamal said the
companies could later upgrade the processing capacity of their
plants to accommodate all of the city's trash which amounts to
6,000 tons a day
The administration had earlier signed a MoU with PT Bio
Fertilizer Indonesia to process the garbage, but the deal fell
through because PT Bio could not get any investors to work with
it.
In a related development, the agency's deputy head Rama Budi
revealed that the agency had spent Rp 1 billion to handle an
additional 4,000 cubic meters of trash per day due to the floods.
Rama said the agency had to hire an additional 83 garbage
trucks, seven skip loaders and eight excavators from private
companies.