Garbage finds its place in Jakarta

Tifa Asrianti, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In response to the city's lack of a proper waste system, several community members have taken it upon themselves to manage and recycle garbage.

Using simple recycling methods, they turn the waste into useful products, to the benefit of themselves and the city.

Endang Wardiningsih, a chemistry teacher at SMU 34 Pondok Labu high school in South Jakarta, said her concern about the waste problem in Jakarta grew as she took her students to Kepulauan Seribu regency in the 1990s. She wanted to help save the environment, but did not know what to do.

"In 1996, I heard about a seminar on garbage and its effect on the environment and I immediately grabbed the chance," Endang told The Jakarta Post.

Supriyadi DS, a resident of Susukan subdistrict, East Jakarta, had another reason to start recycling.

"It all began when our neighborhood unit joined a green competition. We needed fertilizer for our trees and plants, so we sorted our garbage and made fertilizer from the organic waste," Supriyadi told the Post.

While most people look down on garbage as useless, a waste management company in Bekasi, West Java, begs to differ.

PT Mittran was established by Hidayat more than 15 year ago with just a few employees. It has now grown to employ around 50 workers.

At first, the company produced agricultural machines, garbage choppers and other garbage processing machines. In 2003, the company started processing the garbage in its neighborhood.

"We wanted to reduce the amount of garbage while changing the mind-set that garbage is useless," Roy Kuntjoro, Hidayat's partner, told the Post last month.

Though they took different paths to recycling activity, all these individuals and companies have empowered the community to reduce waste and garbage in their neighborhoods.

Endang said she involved her students in recycling through the school's extracurricular Youth Scientific Project (KIR), held every Saturday.

"I don't have to tell the students what to do with the garbage anymore. The senior students teach the younger ones. Some of the senior students are invited to events to explain our recycling activities. The knowledge has been recycled as well," Endang said.

Supriyadi also gets support from his neighborhood unit chief, subdistrict chief and all the prominent figures in the neighborhood.

"We now sort our garbage into three categories: wet, dry and hazardous garbage. The wet garbage will be processed into fertilizer, while the rest will be taken to the final dump or taken by scavengers," he said.

PT Mittran also gets full support from the neighborhood unit chiefs who use its services. Roy said the company dispersed information on the program to the unit chiefs.

At first, the chiefs were doubtful. But after seeing how the program worked, they felt the benefit as their neighborhoods became cleaner, he said.

Seeing the success, people in other neighborhood units were interested in joining the program. In just three months, the company covered seven neighborhood units and it keeps growing.

"Now we serve 3,000 families around this area. We pick up 1.5 tons of garbage every day using three pickup trucks. We have around 20 workers to collect and process the garbage," he said.

The garbage processing in the Susukan neighborhood unit and at the school is done mostly by hand, while Mittran uses choppers to slice garbage into small pieces.

Endang said the recycling work at the school included making souvenirs, fertilizer and recycled paper. The souvenirs, such are key chains and refrigerator magnets, are made of pulp formed by cake casts. The fertilizer is made of leaves from surrounding trees and leftovers from the school's cafeteria. The recycled paper is made from newspapers and other paper.

To process the garbage, Mittran employs elementary school drop-outs or vocational school graduates. Roy said some of the workers are former thugs or ex-convicts.

Roy said the company put garbage bins in residential areas and picked up the garbage every day, charging each customer Rp 30,000 a month.

He said one bin could be used for one family or more. He added that the company sent out 45 new bins every week.

"It is much easier using garbage bins than cement bins in front of houses. We can load the garbage into the trucks in one or two minutes," he said.

Roy said after the garbage was brought to the garbage processing site, it was chopped and sieved to separate it.

Some of it is made into fertilizer by mixing it with peat and cow dung, while the rest is packed into brick sizes and used as fuel for Indocement, a cement factory.

Mittran has a contract with Indocement to supply 10,000 tons of refused derived fuel (RDF) per month.

"The cement factory wants to reduce its charcoal usage by 5 percent. They wanted to try the RDF and so far they are satisfied with the product," he said.

He said Mittran had two other garbage processing sites beside the one in Bekasi. One is located in Citeureup and the other in Gunung Putri, both in Bogor and incorporated with Indocement.

Udin, a resident who lives near the company, said he had been using Mittran's service for one year. He shares a garbage bin with a neighbor.

"My neighborhood is now cleaner than others who don't use Mittran's service," he said.