Garbage Emergency

First, content about the Bantar Gebang Integrated Waste Processing Site (TPST), which, according to research from the Emmett Institute at the University of California, is the world’s second-largest emitter of methane at a rate of 6.3 tons per hour. Second, content stating that 65.4% of Indonesia’s administrative regions are now declared in a garbage emergency based on data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. These two pieces of content may be algorithmic coincidences. But both are the same alarm for the garbage emergency plaguing the republic.

Before we discuss defence technology, macroeconomics, or national digital sovereignty, there is a more immediate, more real, and more urgent issue: the waste we produce every day from our kitchens, offices, and markets. This problem is not merely one of volume exceeding capacity, but one of designing a system that can resolve it.

Growth as Pressure

When Bantar Gebang began operations in 1989, Jakarta had a population of 7.2 million. Today, that figure stands at 10.72 million; a 49% growth over three decades. Meanwhile, Bantar Gebang, once a quiet area of rice fields and excavation sites, is now a densely populated subdistrict with over 113,000 residents. These two growths are locked together: an ever-increasing population generates ever-mounting waste.

Other cities experiencing garbage emergencies are undoubtedly no different. Bogor, South Tangerang, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Bali all face the same pressure: consumption growth outpacing management capacity. This pressure cannot be resolved by simply increasing capacity. It can only be solved by changing the system.

Waste as a Systems Problem

The logic that has driven waste management in Indonesia so far, in systems theory terms, is called an open-loop system: there is a linear causality between consumption growth and residue accumulation at the final disposal site. The more that is produced, the more that is discarded. The more people, the fuller the landfill. In this system, the solution is always one: expand downstream disposal capacity.

But expanding capacity at one point will eventually reach saturation. Bantar Gebang is proof of that.

An alternative logic in systems theory is the closed-loop system: material flows are recycled back to the starting point as secondary raw materials, creating a cycle that minimises residue as much as possible. In this system, waste does not end up in disposal.

It re-enters the cycle as recyclable material. The linear causality between consumption and residue is broken, not just managed. Building a closed-loop system is not utopian. It is a proven policy choice.

State Presence from Upstream to Downstream

A closed-loop system requires state presence at three points simultaneously, not sequentially.

Upstream, the state must compel producers to implement Extended Producer Responsibility: producers’ responsibility for the lifecycle of their products up to disposal. Packaging that cannot be recycled, products that cannot be broken down, are design decisions whose impacts have so far been borne by the state and society. EPR returns that burden to where it belongs: to the producers.

In the middle, the state must build waste sorting habits at the household level; not through awareness campaigns, but through structured incentive engineering, which Skinner called cultural engineering. Standards for bins separated into four categories: organic, dry recyclables, residue, and hazardous materials. Collection by type. Reward mechanisms that feel tangible.

This behavioural infrastructure is what makes sorting a daily habit, not just awareness that often loses to routine. Without consistent sorting at the source, the recycling chain cannot function, and the residue reaching downstream will be far greater than it should be.

Downstream, the state builds residue processing technology for waste that truly cannot be sorted, recycled, or composted any longer. Only this waste should be the concern of downstream operations.

Sweden: When the Closed-Loop System Works

Sweden is the most concrete proof that the closed-loop system is not a laboratory concept. With EPR in place since the 1990s, mandatory sorting now reinforced by law down to the household level, and a ban on landfill disposal since the early 2000s, 39% of Sweden’s waste is fully recycled. The rest is processed as residue in end-of-life facilities.

The measure of its success may be unexpected: Sweden’s residue processing facilities now lack waste as fuel. Not because its economy is sluggish, but because upstream and midstream work so well. That is true success: when downstream lacks waste because upstream and midstream are managed optimally.

Systems Choice, Not Technology Choice

Indonesia produces more than 190,000 tons of waste every day. Two-thirds of its administrative regions are in emergency. Bantar Gebang emits 6.3 tons of methane into the atmosphere per hour. These figures are not just mirrors of an environmental crisis; they are mirrors of the way we choose systems.

As long as waste management is thought of as a downstream disposal affair, the answer will always be the same: enlarge the disposal, expand the land, increase capacity. Every such answer only postpones the same crisis, on a larger scale and at greater cost.

State presence from upstream to downstream in a closed-loop system is not a technology choice. It is a paradigm choice: whether we want to break the causality between growth and residue, or continue managing the consequences of a paradigm mistake we never realise.

That choice must be made now. Before the next Bantar Gebang rises in other cities, before other Indonesian cities become the third and subsequent contributors to methane emissions.