Disposing of waste
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.