Jakarta in need of long-term waste solution

Jakarta in need of long-term waste solution

Alex Wilson, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Last week's signing of an agreement between the Jakarta city
administration and the Bekasi mayoralty means the city's rubbish
disposal headaches are temporarily under control.

And so far, the massive Bantar Gebang dump site will continue
to absorb most of Jakarta's waste so long as the terms of the new
agreement are met.

The closure of the site late last year sent the city
administration scrambling for ways to dispose of the 6,000 tons
of rubbish Jakarta produces every day.

Arrangements for alternative dump sites looked shaky, and
plans to ship processed waste to Bangka or purchase huge
incinerators failed to address short-term problems.

The situation has focused minds on long-term solutions for a
problem with serious health and safety implications.

An environmental scientist with 20 years of research
experience, Sri Bebasari, of the Agency for the Assessment and
Application of Technology (BPPT), has a simple mantra -- reduce,
reuse and recycle -- to deal with the problem.

"We have to change our paradigm to recycle, not just to
collect and dump," said the woman who reluctantly describes
herself as "the queen of the rubbish heap."

While the challenges of recycling in Jakarta are huge, she
said, a long-term approach must be taken.

"In Singapore, they took 30 years to reach their current
situation. It's not just a matter of logistics, but a cultural
matter, and one of education."

She sees integrated waste treatment as the solution -- a
combination of recycling, composting, incineration, and sanitary
landfills.

Waste would be separated at the source in homes and markets,
and be treated on site.

The remaining waste would go into the sanitary landfill.

The landfill would have layers of sand to keep disease-
carrying insects away, and pipes to expel water, along with
methane gasses given off by solid wastes breaking down.

The methane gasses, which make normal landfills unsafe to
rebuild on, could be used as alternative energy sources.
Remaining residue from recycling and composting, meantime, would
be burnt in a huge incinerator.

The obstacles to such a system being implemented in Jakarta
are enormous, as is the price tag. Researchers estimate that just
to design a 20-hectare sanitary landfill would cost Rp 2 billion.
And this would be only 1.3 percent of the total cost of the
development.

The massive incinerators, designed to minimize pollution,
would have to be imported at great expense. One incinerator,
capable of burning 1,000 tons per day, would cost Rp 1.2
trillion.

Expenditure of this scale would put a serious dent in the city
administration's budget, Rp 8.1 trillion in 2001.

Puput Ahmad Safrudin, chairman of the Indonesian Environmental
Forum (WALHI)'s Jakarta chapter, agreed that a sanitary landfill
would be the best solution in the long term, but said that
incinerators were not part of the solution.

"Incinerators are dangerous for respiratory disease, and
research has shown they cause cancer," he said.

Recycling schemes at the neighborhood level were needed to
reduce the volume of rubbish produced, but there was little
support available.

"There is no political will from the local governments to
operate these recycling and composting schemes," he said.

Some NGOs in Jakarta have initiated pilot recycling and
composting schemes at the neighborhood level. These are based on
the idea that Jakarta's waste problem should be solved at its
head -- home, markets, and industries - rather than at its tail,
landfills and incinerators.

Proof positive that these schemes can have an impact comes
from the Philippines. Manila, which produces roughly the same
amount of rubbish per day as Jakarta, experienced a serious waste
disposal crisis early in 2001.

The San Mateo dump, receptacle for most of Manila's 6,000 tons
per day of refuse, closed down and the planned alternative fell
through.

As rubbish piled up in the streets, desperate local
governments began to promote waste reduction and composting. The
rubbish piles were greatly reduced; the Metropolitan Manila
Development Authority (MMDA) attributed the containment of the
crisis to community level recycling.

The crisis in Manila and pressure from NGOs hastened the
passing of the Integrated Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.

The act mandates waste segregation at its source and requires
local governments to divert 25 percent of their waste away from
disposal sites through resource recovery activities within the
next five years.

Eugene Bennagen, a researcher with the Economic and
Environment Program for South East Asia (EEPSA) in the
Philippines, said that the improvement did not last long.

"While there are some success stories of recycling and
composting, the impact of these activities is far from being
felt," she told The Jakarta Post by e-mail.

"The promotion of waste segregation at the source with the
idea of encouraging household recycling and composition has been
unsuccessful -- even with threats of fines for garbage trucks who
collect unsegregated wastes," she continued.

While Jakarta and Manila continue to grapple with problems of
similar dimensions, officials in the Philippines at least have
legislation in place for recycling and are encouraging grassroots
operations.

With large scale centralized solutions coming at a high price,
small community based programs may be the long-term answer to
Jakarta's rubbish dilemma.