Garbage, a source of rags and riches

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.