The rainy season is back! Even though we've only had pre-dawn showers down here at the coast, there are telltale signs on the beach of the deluge in the hills: Plastic wrappers, bottles and rubber sandals are blending in with seaweed, bits of trees and blobs of bitumen. Water is the only reliable cleaning service around here, but she's got to deliver the junk somewhere.
Cleaning and waste disposal is not a sexy topic with local government (yet). This could change if voters demand the service, but for now local government prefer spending their budget on larger commissions, visible high profile projects involve procuring big things: The 16 billion rupiah seawall on our beach, for instance.
Actively trying to ignore the dance and sound intrusion of the three mechanical swans packing giant boulders that crunch and crackle into a sloping seawall, I hardly notice the debris left by the outgoing tide. Preoccupied with cloud formations and the glimmering horizon, our willful dogs tugging at their leash jerk me back to the present.
And onto a sharp shard. I've a hole in my footgiving the burning signs of an infection. As I write, I'm soaking it in warm brine to soften the thick skin before opening it up to clean and disinfect with 70% alcohol. There's a silver lining to this monsoon cloud. This column is due and I can't walk away from this desk for a while.
There are not enough landfills to accept the waste we produce. Rubbish collection is unreliable. In Bali, even municipal rubbish collection trucks resort to dumping into rivers. Up in the hills locals and businesses often dump their waste into ravines to get it out of sight. Once the rains start, this all gets flushed downhill. The debris regularly clogs drains and causes flooding, which is a nuisance to all, but most persist in their habits because of a perception that there is no alternative.
Rivers flow to the sea carrying a wealth of waste. A lot of it is recyclable. There must be an alternative, wouldn't you agree? Imagine yourself as a primary school student at a rural village in Bali sitting your end of year exams. Here is a question from previous years that touches on sanitation: "What is the correct method of disposing your plastic rubbish?"
The exam is multiple choice, so take a pick: (a) Throw it in the river, (b) Burn it, (c) Bury it, or (d) None of the above. Sorry, recycling hasn't quite made it to the school curriculum yet. Obviously we've got to find other options for `none of the above' but for the time being, if you want to ace that exam, the correct answer according to the marking schedule is (b) Burn it.
According to recent studies, plastics can remain as long as 4500 years in the environment.
Dry plastic burns beautifully like wax candles, but it's the carcinogenic dioxins, furans and styrene readily absorbed through lungs and skin I'm worried about.
Household burning of rubbish can increase the risk of heart disease, aggravate respiratory ailments such as asthma and emphysema, and cause rashes, nausea, or headaches. It can damage the nervous system, kidney or liver, and also has a detrimental effect to the reproductive and development systems.
I happen to be one of those hippies who refuse unnecessary plastic bags to the bemusement, amusement or utter confusion and blank disbelief of denizens of checkout counters. A ban on the use of plastic, however, is likely to be futile. Indonesia is too `democratic' -- for lack of a better word -- to be able to enforce such a rule.
The risks to health and safety through increased chances of damage or contamination would also be so great that it would be irresponsible to ban plastic without offering a feasible economic alternative.
As Indian Physicist S. S. Verma puts it, the crux of the issue is more "the judicious use and re-use of plastic".
It's early days of trials yet, but in an article titled "Roads from plastic waste" in India's The Tribune S.S. Verma boasts how roads made of bitumen mixed with plastic can carry heavier loads and can last at least twice as long as their bitumen-only cousins.
The trial plastic roads in India use mainly plastic carry-bags, disposable cups and polyethylene (PET) bottles that are collected from garbage dumps as ingredient material. Mixed with hot bitumen, the plastics melt to form an oily coat over the aggregate and the mixture is laid on the road surface like a normal tar road.
Research has found that shredded plastic waste can act as a strong binding agent for tar, making the asphalt last longer. These plastic roads withstand hotter temperatures on sunny days without melting.
Reducing the porosity of the road, the use of plastic could reduce water-damage to roads, saving money from road repairs. Verma estimates that each km of road with an average width requires over two tons of polyblend.
Wonderful: yet another use for plastic. We know the stuff is valuable, is it time to for a concerted effort to collect and reuse it?
Kadek Krishna Adidharma can be reached at kadek@adidharma.net
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