Garbage, a source of rags and riches

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

Garbage, though unsightly and smelly, is not without its uses; indeed it can, if handled properly, be a source of money.

Take the efforts of the Tangerang-based Cooperation for Developing the Economy of Indonesian People (Koperi).

With 14 workers, Koperi produces an average of 1,000 kilograms of organic fertilizer per day. This fertilizer is, in turn, sold for between Rp 400 and Rp 700 per kilo, according to Koperi chairman Gusri Effendi Simanjuntak.

Gusri, 36, an activist of Communication Forum for Small and Middle Businessmen (FKPPI), started out making organic fertilizer two years ago in small amounts in the Cileduk market.

There, he noticed plots of land across the capital city and Tangerang, which had been neglected by developers still reeling from the economic crisis. Gusri, while cultivating the plots for vegetable farming, tried out the organic fertilizer.

In all, he explained, the composting process takes one week.

As garbage trucks unload the trash, workers separate the organic from the nonorganic. The organic garbage is then put onto vessels, and mixed in a semi-micro bioactivator, which converts waste, be it liquid or solid, into useful material.

After successfully studying how to transform waste into organic fertilizer, Gusri has also tested its usefulness on several local farms across the municipal town over the past two years.

In the time since, Koperi has grown into one of the main organic fertilizer producers in Tangerang.

"The present garbage handling system, as applied across the country," he said in an interview, "is merely removing problems from one place to other new places."

In February 2001, Koperi got a significant boost when the Tangerang municipal administration entrusted the company to compost garbage at Rawa Kucing. Administration officials supplied Gusri with a warehouse, 15 fermentation vessels and a rototiller modified to shred trash.

It is estimated that Tangerang's 1.3 million people produce 3,290 cubic meters of household garbage per day. But only 1,080 cubic meters can be transported to Rawa Kucing dump.

"The problem now," he said, "is that we need more vessels for fermentation process, and more machines which destroy trash."

Gusri said Koperi's target next year is the production of 15 tons of compost daily. That fertilizer would then be transformed from 150 tons, or 1,500 cubic meters of wet garbage.

Koperi has also developed several business units as an urban waste management consultant, while conducting workshops on farming business development and machinery supplies for farming.

These all take place at the Rawa Kucing dump, Jl. Sewan, Benda district of Tangerang. He has also built a new compost maker in Sibolga, Central Tapanuli, North Sumatra.

Gusri is now also managing its second organic fertilizer pilot project on a one-hectare onion farm in Satahi Nauli village, in the Kolang district of Central Tapanuli Regency, North Sumatra.

So far, it has absorbed 70 tons of the fertilizer produced in Tangerang.

In the first harvest last September, it produced 10 tons of onion, while a similar farm without organic fertilizer in Karo and Simalungun regencies could only produce four to five tons of onion per hectare.

Meanwhile, Nuriman Machjudin, the municipal head of the Tangerang health agency, said her administration had trained residents in Mekarsari subdistrict, near the Rawa Kucing dump, how to make compost.

Although the dregs of trash can be turned into organic fertilizer, the liquid produced by the trash is dangerous and threatens the environment, she said; it must be disposed of.

"We are developing a technology," said Nuriman, adding that the agency is also working on a method of turning bones into compost.