Garbage disposal

Garbage disposal

I like The Jakarta Post's Feb. 25 front page article on garbage disposal. In Curitiba, southern Brazil, we have 1.65 million people that produce 1,070 tons of garbage a day. We collect that with 45 compacting trucks, three pick-ups a week. Garbage in the central areas is collected during the night.

Jakarta has nine million people, produces 25,000 cubic meters of garbage a day and uses 716 trucks to collect it. Even taking into consideration that Jakarta's traffic is much more congested than Curitiba's, it may be possible to manage a better collection with the existing fleet of 716 trucks.

A better way would be:

* To start phasing out existing trucks by attrition. Only new compacting trucks shall be acquired. That means: more trash per truck and by-passing the compaction transit site.

* Assign the compacting trucks to the congested central area with daily pick-ups only during the night when the traffic is less.

* Assign the noncompacting trucks to the outskirt area with a three-day pick-up.

* Purchase of special trucks manned by trained and protected staff for waste collection from hospitals and clinics. The garbage should not be disposed of in the normal garbage dumps where people scavenge. This garbage and contaminated liquids should be incinerated.

I think if we use a bit of imagination we can improve the transport by Angkutan Kota here.

OSVALDO COELHO

Bandung, West Java