City to work with private sector on waste recycling
JAKARTA (JP): The city administration revealed plans yesterday to cooperate with a private foundation and a Canadian firm to recycle garbage.
Assistant to the city secretary in charge of development affairs, Prawoto S. Danoemihardjo, said the private foundation, Yayasan Rehabilitasi Prajurit Utama Seroja (Veteran's Foundation), would cooperate with Canada's Urban Resources Technologies Incorporation.
"I hope the agreement terms can be solved this year and we can start recycling next year," he said after meeting the private investor yesterday.
Under the agreement, the joint venture will open a recycling factory with a capacity to recycle two million cubic meters of garbage a day in Pluit, North Jakarta. Urban Resources' recycling technology will be used to process garbage into building materials, like bricks and ceramics.
Prawoto said the cooperation would not be too complicated and the factory would need only an 800-square-meter plot.
The city produces about 25,000 cubic meter of garbage a day. About 40 percent of this is inorganic.
He said the material produced from the recycled garbage would reduce the high cost of building houses.
He said cooperation with private sector would not reduce the essential role of scavengers in the collection of the city's garbage.
"Scavengers will distribute the garbage to the factory," he said.
Landfill
Meanwhile a new 100-hectare waste disposal area will be built in Ciangir village, Legok district, Tangerang, to support the operation of the landfill at Bantar Gebang, Bekasi.
Head of the City Sanitation Office M. Subasir said yesterday the new facility would be slightly different from the one in Bekasi.
He said trees would be planted around the area in a bid to reduce bad garbage odor.
Subasir said a feasibility study and the construction of the project were expected to begin after buying the 13.5 hectare- residential site on the plot.
"With the operation of the new landfill, some of the garbage which is now sent to Bantar Gebang can be taken to Ciangir. Hopefully, the office can tackle all of the city's garbage," he said.
The new dumping area would use the sanitary landfill system like Bantar Gebang.
With this system the area is excavated to about three or four meters, installed with equipment to absorb water from garbage, covered with clay, and finally installed with pipes to transfer liquid waste to a purification facility.
The operation of the new facility is also expected to reduce heavy congestion around Bantar Gebang which is caused by the line up of around 2,500 garbage trucks.
The existing Bantar Gebang's 108-hectare plot landfill opened in 1989. It takes 21,500 cubic meters of waste daily. It is projected to be able to take garbage until 2003. (ste/04)