'Garbage will remain a headache'

'Garbage will remain a headache'

In observance of World Environment Day on June 5, The Jakarta
Post interviewed some people about the public's awareness of the
need to conserve natural resources. Some of them shared their
views on the importance of minimizing household waste by
encouraging recycling.

Mutiara, 25, is an employee at the Islamic State University in
Ciputat, South Jakarta. She lives with her parents in Bogor:

I think we will continue to have problems with the current
disastrous garbage and pollution situations if we keep thinking
they way we do now. Many of us still believe that garbage is not
an our immediate concern, and that we can throw away whatever we
want as there will always be a garbage collector to take it away.

In my view, recycling will not help a lot as only some kinds
of garbage can be recycled with our current technology. So, unless
we have technology that can recycle everything, then we will have
to change our mindset to be able to minimize the amount of
garbage we produce.

So, how can we hope to deal with garbage using environmentally
friendly methods -- such as separating organic and inorganic
waste in our own homes -- if we don't even think we have a
garbage problem?

Chicha, 24, works for a non-governmental organization in
Central Jakarta. She lives with her parents in Duren Tiga, South
Jakarta:

I think we have a problem with garbage and the environment as
our legal system doesn't encourage people to deal with their own
trash wisely.

As we know, households produce much more garbage than
industry, but households are never punished for that.

All of our law enforcers focus on industry as they are the big
fish, and automatically lead to a lot of publicity if the law
enforcers succeed in uncovering, for instance, environmental
crimes by a company. In addition, I am concerned that there is a
lot of scope for bribery when law enforcers are dealing with
firms.

Basically, I think we can prevent environmental problems being
caused by industry as long as our law enforcers are not corrupt.
But how can we deal with the problems resulting from household
waste if we don't start reducing the amount of garbage we produce
or start recycling it?

--The Jakarta Post