Vermicomposting vs. mall-building

As yet another controversy flares over waste management and garbage disposal in the metropolis, ought not there to be a more holistic approach taken to the problem?

A considerable element of this problem appears to come in the form of plastic for bottles, cartons and bags, which, as we all know, are simply thrown away in the casual manner in drains and on patches of waste ground.

A consumer campaign directed at the public to purchase durable shopping bag and, to reject plastic bags at supermarkets and outlets such as Carrefour, which in turn should be persuaded to move quickly away from plastic, seems to be in order.

I, for one, make a conscious effort to give back superfluous plastic wrappings where possible and to recycle those such as come on greetings cards for other purposes. Bottle banks should be set up by the Jakarta Metropolitan administration (DKI) for mineral water bottle collection.

An imaginative approach to the enormous problem of food waste would go some way to dealing with that element, and might be copied from Japan, where legislation is in place requiring restaurants and others to recycle a certain percentage of such waste.

Local composting initiatives using the vermicomposting (use of worms in the process) technique are not impossible and can help generate income from micro-gardening of vegetables; this could be done on a neighborhood-to-neighborhood basis, provided small- scale credit could be made available.

Of course, in a city where the governor spends much energy promoting massage-stroking statuary and environmentally ruinous projects such as the intended coastal reclamation scheme whilst evicting the most vulnerable, this may be too much too ask.

It may be too much to ask of this particular governor to leave aside the conceits of a mall-building, property development culture to look at the waste and other problems in a more sympathetic fashion.

DAVID JARDINE Jakarta