Disposing of waste

Although it may not have been one of the more sensational events of the week, the inauguration on Monday of this country's first industrial waste treatment plant surely deserves some comment.

The truth is that for far too long too many companies in Indonesia have been reluctant to seriously consider the problem of waste treatment.

To address this problem, on the eve of the new plant's inauguration, the government issued a regulation requiring all manufacturing companies to neutralize their toxic and hazardous wastes. In the past, many industries were reported to have raised objections to precisely such a requirement on the basis of the argument that the process would add too heavily to their production costs and make their products less competitive.

Of course, for companies operating on a small scale, such an argument may be true to a certain extent. After all, manufacturing firms have to cope with what economists refer to as the economy of scale. That is, the bigger the factory and its operations, the lighter the cost burden which the manufacturer has to bear relative to the volume of goods produced. Such an argument, therefore, seems valid, especially since small-scale industries comprise an important segment of this country's industrial sector. They not only provide a service to the society by turning out goods, but also by providing jobs to many thousands of people.

The significance of the Nambo Village waste treatment plant in this particular context is obviously that it helps bring down those additional production costs for small-scale enterprises by eliminating the need for them to own and operate their own waste treatment plants.

In the past, even larger industries were reported to have used this argument to object to any government regulation that would require them to treat their toxic wastes. Surely, however, the developments of the last several years have made it clear that such a rationale can no longer hold. Under the new world order that is now rapidly taking shape, even the trade and industrial sectors can no longer act as if they are unaffected by the spirit of environmental awareness that is now rapidly spreading across the globe. It is in their own interest that industrialists respect the principles of environmental soundness if they want to compete in the world market.

Thus, as President Soeharto remarked on the occasion, the inauguration of the new US$95 million plant is expected to make Indonesia's industrial products more competitive on international markets by meeting the criteria of environmental "cleanliness" that more and more countries around the world are setting for their imports. The new plant, located at Nambo Village in Bogor regency, is the first in Indonesia, as well as the biggest of its kind so far in Southeast Asia. A second plant for the treatment of industrial wastes is now reportedly being planned for construction near Surabaya, East Java's provincial capital, which has the second-largest concentration of industries in Indonesia. Similar plants are also being planned for Lhok Seumawe in Aceh and for East Kalimantan.

Surely, as this country prepares itself for its take-off towards self-sustained growth and because the industrialization process is bound to accelerate in the years to come, the launching of the Nambo Village waste treatment is a laudable, albeit small, step towards ensuring that the process of development will not impair the sustained health of our environment.