Jakarta copies neighbors' plans

City Secretary Ritola Tasmaya said that Jakarta has been copying Singapore in using incinerators to overcome its garbage disposal problem.

The city plans to buy four incinerators by 2007, each of them with the capacity to process up to 2,000 tons of waste.

According to Singapore's Ministry of Environment and Water Resources website, the state operates four incinerators with a total capacity of 8,200 tons of waste per day. The capacity is higher than Singapore's daily waste of 5,800 tons. The four incinerators handle 90 percent of the country's waste.

The remaining 10 percent is processed using the sanitary landfill system.

Singapore's Tuas South Incineration Plant (TSIP) -- which will be copied by Jakarta -- is the largest incineration plant in the country.

The three others are the Ulu Pandan Refuse Incineration Plant, the Tuas Incineration Plant and the Senoko Incineration Plant.

TSIP, which was constructed in 2000 and cost S$900 million (US$542. 17 million), can process around 3,000 tons of daily waste using its six machines.

The plant is provided with four high capacity rotary bulky waste crushers to improve efficiency because garbage comes to the plant in various shapes and sizes.

The plant produces 80 megawatts of electricity, 80 percent of which will be made available for the public to use, while another 20 percent is used for the plant.

The four incineration plants produce 2 percent of the overall electricity used by Singapore.

High-capacity incinerators are currently also in service in several cities in other industrialized countries like Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Bangkok has also installed conventional incineration plants at two of its landfill sites but one of them was shut down recently due to opposition from the public.

Jakarta purchased 15 small-scale incinerators in 2000 and 2001, each priced at Rp 25 million (US$2,762).

However, the incinerators, proved to be ineffective as the highest temperature reached was only 900 degrees Celsius, while they produced a lot of smoke and consumed a large amount of fuel. -- JP