Disposing of the city's garbage

Disposing of the city's garbage

By Johannes Simbolon

JAKARTA (JP): If you drive along the main streets of Jakarta at night, you will see a horde of workers, clad either in yellow, blue or orange, sweeping the streets and collecting the disposals of the day.

If you take the same streets to go to the office the following morning, you usually feel fine since you see no litter any longer.

And if you live in a posh housing complex, where cleanliness is usually well preserved, you might draw the conclusion that Jakarta is clean and tidy.

The national committee for the Adipura environmental award concluded the same when they bestowed it on four of the city's mayoralties, South, East, West and Central Jakarta, last year.

But, if you visit second or third class roads, particularly in slum areas, you will find that garbage remains a big problem for Jakarta.

According to the latest data issued by the Jakarta Sanitation Office, more than 25,000 cubic meters of refuse are disposed of in Jakarta every day. Approximately 21,000 cubic meters, or 83 percent, can be accommodated in the existing landfill sites.

Jakarta is home to more than 9 million people. Each resident is estimated to dispose of 2.92 liters of waste per day.

The figures exclude human excrement, which is put at around 25 liters per person per year or about 945 cubic meters per day in the city. Only 300 cubic meters, or about 31 percent, can be handled.

Where does the unhandled garbage and sewage go?

"It is used by people to fill out low land, it is turned into compost, remains scattered or goes into the rivers and out to sea," said Moch. Subasir, chief of the Jakarta Sanitation Office.

The 4,000 cubic meters of unhandled garbage is equal to 400 trucks each with a 10-cubic-meter capacity.

Subasir blames the problem on an insufficient number of carriers. There are only 716 trucks, a far cry from the 1,300 trucks needed to take all the garbage to the landfill sites or aeration plants.

Jakarta has one giant landfill in Bantar Gebang, Bekasi, 40 kilometers from Jakarta, on 108 hectares of land; and two aeration plants, in Pulo Gebang, East Jakarta, covering around 12 hectares of land, with a capacity of aerating 300 cubic meters of sewage every day, and in Penas, East Jakarta, with a capacity of aerating 60 cubic meters a day.

Traffic jams

If there were no traffic jams in Jakarta, a greater amount of garbage and sewage could be handled every day.

Subasir says each truck can only make 1.6 trips per day.

In an effort to shorten the trip, the Jakarta administration, together with a private company, PT Wiragulfindo Sarana, built a 2.5-hectare transit station in Cakung-Cilincing (Cacing) in 1992, East Jakarta, where the garbage is dumped and compressed before being taken by other trucks to Bantar Gebang.

The compressed garbage will prolong the life of Bantar Gebang, as it will be able to store more garbage. The compressed garbage reportedly takes eight times less space than the uncompressed waste.

However, the Cacing transit station's capacity is only 1,000 tons per day. The rest of the garbage is thus carried directly from refuse containers in housing complexes, stores, etc. to Bantar Gebang.

The Jakarta Sanitation Office's spokesman, Iskandar Damanik, says the transit station thus far only receives garbage from West Jakarta.

"It's too far from West Jakarta to Bantar Gebang," says Manik.

Opened in 1989, Bantar Gebang can take up garbage for another four to seven years. Thus, between the year 2000 and 2003 the man-made valley will be full and will have to be closed.

This would be even be shorter if there were no scavengers who diligently collect the recyclable waste. There are reportedly more than 10,000 scavengers making a life from the landfill.

Environment

The issue of garbage and sewage in Jakarta doesn't only concern the amount of waste that goes unhandled, but also the environmental soundness of the landfill and aeration plants.

The aeration plants in Pulo Gebang and Penas use a method which is environmentally sound. The city administration plans to build another plant in Duri Kosambi with a 300-cubic-meter capacity.

Environmentally sound methods are also used at the Bantar Gebang landfill site.

Before Bantar Gebang was opened, the garbage was handled in the so-called open dumping method, which does not meet environmental requirements.

At least two big landfills used the method, one in Cacing, and another in Kapuk Kamal, West Jakarta.

The Cacing landfill site was closed after the operation of Bantar Gebang, while the Kapuk Kamal was still used until last year.

At both locations, the garbage was simply dumped without any treatment, left to stink and pollute the air, while the leachet, or the liquid that seeps out of the garbage, contaminated the groundwater in the area.

"It was closed after the area's residents launched protests," Manik says.

Bantar Gebang meets environmental requirements and in that respect is regarded as the best sanitary landfill in Southeast Asia, according to Manik.

To make the sanitary landfill, the land was dug out three meters deep. The big hole was then covered with clay and high density polyethylene to prevent the leachet from infiltrating the ground and contaminating the groundwater.

The leachet is channeled to a main hole which leads to the adjacent aeration plants, where it is processed to extract its toxic elements. The water is then streamed out to the nearby river.

To eliminate the putrid smell, the garbage is covered with 15 centimeters of thick soil after it is two meters high. Garbage is dumped again up to seven meters high before being layered again with soil up to 30 centimeters thick.

"When it is closed in the future, the landfill will look like a hill. It can then be converted into a nice park, a housing complex, or whatever," Manik says.

The city administration plans to open another sanitary landfill like Bantar Gebang in Ciangir, Tangerang on about 100 hectares of land. Two transit stations will be built in Duri Kosambi, West Jakarta and Sunter Agung, North Jakarta.

The question is: What will happen if the Bantar Gebang and Ciangir landfills are closed? Where will the garbage be dumped?

"We have been thinking about using the garbage to reclaim the sea or buying incinerators," says Manik.