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It’s not easy being green. And it’s not cheap, either. Separating paper and plastic trash, switching off the light as you leave a room or walking instead of taking a car are simple individual acts that cumulatively can have a great impact. But what about dealing with multimillion-dollar budgets for citywide trash disposal? Or cleaning our skies of deadly smog, providing clean and safe drinking water, and limiting pollution from buildings?

Jakarta Governor Fauzi Bowo, a prime target of residents’ anger about the environmental unfriendliness of the city, knows how tough it is to get things done. On any given issue, he is in the hot seat and facing numerous roadblocks from his constituents, the national government and commercial interests. He doesn’t have time to worry about trash clogging a gutter somewhere when any decision to replace the city’s landfill in Bekasi with a clean, high-tech incinerator could lead to social unrest.

Consider landfill. “We pay a tipping fee,” Fauzi told the Jakarta Globe in an interview for this special section. “For each ton of solid waste, we pay Rp 103,000 [$11] per ton [to a private operator]. Any proposal exceeding that price the city cannot afford.” 

In other words, more eco-friendly trash-handling solutions than traditional landfill technology run up against fiscal realities.  “If we want to go high-tech, how much do we have to pay for each and every ton of our solid waste? Around Rp 375,000. Where do I get the money?” Fauzi asked. “I’d have to charge more to the people, but who can afford it?”

So green trash disposal, like a lot of other environmental issues for our messy, sprawling city, are a bit more complex than just tossing a biodegradable bag in your trash can.

We all say we want “green” buildings, cars and water services. But getting there is tough. Buildings can be made greener and cleaner, hybrid vehicles imported. A central water purification and recycling system could ease pressure on the land and city.

These are among the issues that officials at the local and national level must tackle through new policies and greater cooperation. So far, the record is not good and we all live with a legacy of pollution in the age of global warming. But that doesn’t mean that the city’s nine million people are helpless. Jakarta’s trash recycling industry, for example, is a grassroots creation, built primarily by lower-income residents. It has now spread to around one-third of the city’s 2,500 neighborhood wards.

Top-down action alone won’t work. Going green is a combination of government policies, local activism and individual action. All three are already happening in Jakarta, but many green issues have yet to be tackled.

This special section takes a look at what Jakarta is, or should be, doing to become a greener city, and some of the people who are working behind the scenes to make things better.