•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

The garbage dump landslide that flattened dozens of homes in the town of Cimahi, West Java, on Feb. 20, 2005, killing 147 people, still weighs heavily on the minds of residents. Every year, mourners gather at the now-closed dump site, which used to handle waste from the nearby provincial capital, Bandung, to dutifully commemorate the disaster’s anniversary.

While survivors still complain that the dump hasn’t been rehabilitated for other economic or community uses, others say the disaster has in its own way spurred Cimahi to take measures to protect its future.

Mayor Itoc Tochija notes that the city of 600,000 now recycles more than 30 percent of its organic waste, rather than throwing it into a temporary landfill.

“This [accident] was an inspiration for us,” he said, claiming that by 2012 the city would be recycling 100 percent of its organic waste into commercial fertilizer for farming and briquets to fire the machinery of nearby factories.

Cimahi learned its lesson with garbage the hard way, and it’s a lesson that Jakarta might want to heed. According to Tochija, staff members working at Cimahi’s garbage drop-off centers separate all organic waste — and even some non-organic waste such as bottles — for recycling, while the remaining trash is hauled by truck to the landfill.

As a result, the city is forced to deal with a lot less garbage.

This type of effort explains why Cimahi in 2009 won an Adipura Award, which recognizes the country’s top 100 green cities.

Jakarta’s waste management system is the polar opposite of what is happening in Cimahi. In the capital, private garbage collectors haul solid waste to the city’s 1,200 drop-off stations, along the way remixing recyclable and non-recyclable materials previously separated by private households and businesses.

Staff members at the drop-off stations then throw the whole lot into trucks bound for the city’s two landfills, where any recycling that takes place is left to scavengers in Bekasi and Tangerang.

Meanwhile, private trash collectors sometimes just dump the garbage wherever they can to save on gasoline costs to get to the drop-off centers, which helps explain why up to 20 percent of the 6,250 tons of daily waste produced by the city ends up clogging its rivers, canals and waterways.

Given the scope of Jakarta’s garbage problems, it’s time to start thinking outside the box. The Bantar Gebang landfill in Bekasi, for example, is already operating at 30 percent beyond its capacity, and as the capital’s population grows and its business and industrial sectors expand, there will only be more solid waste to deal with.

Risyana Sukarma, an environmental consultant at the World Bank, says Jakarta simply lacks the infrastructure to deal with its trash effectively, and its collection, transportation and disposal methods in particular fall short of meeting standards set by the Kyoto Protocol.

That said, each of these problem areas has presented an opportunity for private sector investors who are now trying to cash in on the city’s untapped “urban mines.” One such company is PT Godang Tua Jaya, which manages Bantar Gebang and is building three intermediate treatment facilities on site.

The company acted after a plan by the Jakarta administration dating back to 1997 to build an intermediate treatment facility in each of the city’s five municipalities to ease pressure on Bantar Gebang fell apart due to public opposition.

So Godang Tua Jaya is filling the void by building one facility to turn organic waste into compost, a second to recycle glass, plastic and cardboard, as well as a power plant fuelled by methane gas. The plant will eventually produce 26 megawatts of power, but will initially churn out two megawatts after it opens this month.

Godang Tua Jaya will sell the power back to the city, completing a full circle of shared responsibility for solid waste. More important, it is estimated that the three new facilities will eventually reduce the amount of waste being dumped into the Bantar Gebang landfill by 2,000 tons per day by 2023.

“The government can’t work by itself, and private companies can’t work by themselves,” said Douglas Manurun, Godang Tua Jaya’s managing director. “Together, we can have a win-win situation: the people and the government get a cleaner city,  and the private sector makes money.” 

Godang Tua Jaya has teamed up with another private company, PT Navigat Organic Energy, to invest Rp 600 billion ($66 million) to build the three facilities, which they expect to bring a high return. 

“If it wasn’t profitable for us, then we wouldn’t do it,” Manurun said.

Another private company making greenbacks by making Jakarta more green is Geocycle, a branch of international cement producer Holcim.

Geocycle, which produces about 5.5 million tons of cement in Indonesia annually, collects and then incinerates about 20,000 tons of solid waste a month as part of its cement-making process. The waste is burned in a kiln at temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Celsius and reduced to ash, which is then blended into its cement mixture.

This process neither produces residue nor does it degrade the quality of the cement whatsoever, says Vincent Aloysius, manager of Geocycle Indonesia.

The company is also looking at using human waste in the making of its cement, a process that is already being done at its plants in Europe, Aloysius says.

The World Bank’s Sukarma says environmentally sound companies like Geocycle are beginning to have a noticeable impact on the city’s waste problems, but they alone aren’t the solution.

Industrial waste, he says, only accounts for about 20 percent of Jakarta’s total, with the vast majority coming from household garbage. Ultimately, the key to tackling Jakarta’s solid waste problems is to educate the population about sustainable waste management, he says.

But creativity should count for something.