Indonesian honored for his novel way to deal with dirt

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): Most people shun waste, especially of the human variety, but it gave Agus Gunarto the inspiration to create an award-winning invention.

His integrated sewage treatment plant won a silver award in the Far Eastern Economic Review's first annual Asian Innovation Award.

Employed in the local government sanitation office in Malang, East Java, Agus found out by chance he had triumphed when he took part in a three-day seminar on waste management in Yogyakarta at the end of October.

A German sitting near him was reading the Review's Oct. 22 issue, which announced the 22 award winners from 115 nominees.

"I saw my picture in the magazine... I was so surprised because I didn't register to take part in the awards," Agus told The Jakarta Post by phone from Malang last week. He still does not know who put submitted his entry.

He came up with the idea to create the treatment plant in 1985 after filth -- mainly human excrement -- from the nearby Kali Brantas river flooded houses in his neighborhood during the rainy season.

"I felt the urge to do something, especially because human excrement makes people sick, causing diarrhea," said the father of three.

He blamed people's established custom of using waterways as a flowing "toilet" for the problem.

He devised a tank, now better known as the "Agus Gunarto Tank", to create an integrated sewage system for households in 1987.

"By 1989, many people were already using the integrated system," Agus, 41, said proudly.

But the process of winning over people was hard initially.

"When I revealed my idea, many people laughed at it ... I had to work hard to convince people."

At the time, Agus was working as driver of three-wheeled public transportation vans (bemo) and supervising Malang's street sweepers on top of his studies at Merdeka University. He obtained his undergraduate degree in economics in 1987.

His tank, designed specifically for sloping land areas, was first connected to about 60 households; today it serves about 400.

"My invention is already in use in eight subdistricts here and also in Bandung. Soon, it will also be used in Surabaya."

Agus will visit Nepal to introduce his invention later in November.

He said each unit of the tanks occupied about 16 square meters. A household pays Rp 70,000 for a two-year connection fee.

He is now testing a similar system, using an electric pump instead of a tank, for flat land.

The waste is utilized as fertilizer. "The process takes about a year, we call the fertilizer Vitamin P2T."

Agus is working with Malang's Brawijaya University to promote the fertilizer, which is sold at Rp 500 per kilogram.

Agus, who won the Kalpataru Award last year for the invention, is not planning to rest on his laurels.

"I want to develop plants to treat waste from slaughterhouses and car washes."

Agus was not the sole Indonesian picked for the awards.

PT PP London Sumatra Indonesia (Lonsum), a publicly listed plantation firm with about 150,000 hectares of plantations around the country, won a bronze award for its innovation which dramatically increased the company's yield of crude palm oil.

"I didn't know that our research won an award... It's very nice," Hugh L. Foster, the company's director of research at the Bah Lias Research Station in Medan, told the Post by phone.

"I think this is the first time we have won an award for our research."

Set up in 1906, Lonsum has long committed itself to research by allocating 1 percent of its annual revenues for research and development.

Foster said research was vital to the firm's operations, such as determining the best fertilizers or the most efficient way to deal with pests.

Its three research stations are in Medan; Lubuk Linggau, South Sumatra; and Kalimantan.

Lonsum formerly boasted yields of crude palm oil at 5.2 tons per hectare, at least 10 percent higher than that achieved by other Southeast Asian plantation companies.

The research, which was started about 20 years ago, raised the yield to 7.5 tons per hectare.

"The experiment's result has already been implemented in some fields," Foster said.

Another nominee from Indonesia, Julius Abyasa, came up empty- handed for his electric-acoustic version of the angklung, a traditional musical instrument made from bamboo. His version can play a range of music, from classical to jazz and blues.

An independent board of judges made the selections.

Amid Asian countries' struggle to overcome the crisis by prioritizing development growth, some important themes, especially environmental innovations, were well represented.

Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. was the lone winner of the gold award for its "smog-eating" trees with a double set of chromosomes that absorb as much as 100 percent more nitrogen oxide, a harmful gas from auto emissions.

Nine silver awards and 12 bronze awards were honored for interesting innovations in several categories: environment, technology, agriculture, leisure, architecture and media.

Irish Technologies of Malaysia earned a bronze award for an invention that could put passport forgers out of business.

The company invented an electronic passport loaded with a computer chip that effectively guards against forgery and most other types of tampering. The chip can store a digitized photograph, a thumbprint, a digital signature and several pages of information about the passport owner.

Fish lovers who did not want to be harried by concerns about feeding their pets or changing the water will be interested in NEC Corp. of Japan's virtual fish in their home. The virtual fish tank uses a high-definition monitor and a laser-disc player to create fish images looking very much like the real animals.