Getting rid of trash
February 21, 2012
On the outskirts of the Indonesian city of Tangerang, a waste processing facility plays an important role for the communities in the region. Since 2010, the plant has helped clean up the local roads and streets and provided jobs for many.
Trash enters the facility, where it is collected, sorted and processed, either to be recycled or composted. Every day, up to 15 motorcycles make rounds in the city of Tangerang, picking up some 400 kilograms of trash a day.
Employees at the facility sort the trash by hand, carefully separating paper, glass, plastics and organic waste from each other. Anything that can be recycled is sent back to be processed and reused. Some people use the recyclable materials to fashion useful items, creating wallets out of old plastic bags or juice cartons.
Organic waste such as fruit peels or leftover vegetables and grains are composted and sold as fertilizer. The long list of buyers includes tree nurseries and gardeners eager to access organic, sustainable fertilizer for their work. In the end, only a third of the trash collected can be neither recycled nor composted, and that ends up back on the landfill.
Residents tackle trash
The waste processing facility has created jobs and provided an important economic perspective for several people in the region. The contribution to saving the climate is simply an added benefit for many.
The facility dramatically reduces the amount of methane gas that would normally be emitted from the landfills in the area. Methane is considered extremely dangerous for the climate: it is 20 times more harmful than even CO2. The development organization "BORDA Germany" estimates that Tagerang’s trash facility helps save 130 tons of methane gas a year.
The organization has played a big role in supporting residents in the greater Tangerang area develop and build their waste plant. Funded by the German government, the group has been working to help improve living conditions in developing and poor countries around the world for more than 30 years.
"There is a municipal waste removal system in Indonesia but it's inefficient," BORDA Director Andreas Ulrich says, adding that thousands of tons of trash pile up every day there. "The public waste facilities simply can't cope."
On the Indonesian island of Bali, too, residents are taking their trash disposal problems into their own hands. In 2008, a composting facility was set up in the village of Temesi. Some 85 percent of the waste that arrives at the plant is organic and can be composted and processed into natural fertilizer. Five percent can be recycled, and only 10 percent ends up back on the landfill site.
Turning garbage into gold
This composting facility too provides a good opportunity to earn money for communities in the region.
"The problem is, chemical fertilizers that consume so much energy when they are produced still receive federal funding," Thomas Finsterwald, a project leader at the Swiss nonprofit “myclimate” says.
The organization helps fund the composting facility in Bali, where some 350 tons of methane gas are saved every year. Myclimate adds up those savings and, through price-tagging, gives them a monetary value with carbon certificates. Those certificates are sold to a variety of customers such as travel operators who can compensate for CO2 emissions resulting from air travel.
The projects in Tangerang and Bali have helped transform and shape local attitudes towards waste. Now, even young school children learn the value of separating trash and composting.
The facilities have reinvigorated the regional economies as well, providing jobs and salaries for many. In Tangerang, the locals are taking over responsibility for their waste, too: each family pays about one euro a month for the composting facility. The average monthly household income there totals the equivalent of about 150 euros.
BORDA Germany sees great potential in finding sustainable and eco-friendly ways to process garbage. The organization has already invested 120,000 Euros in 15 waste processing facilities in Indonesia.
"The benefits of those kinds of projects have already been proven. In five years, we could see thousands of such facilities in Indonesia alone," Andreas Ulrich says.
And there is plenty of potential for expansion beyond Indonesia’s borders, too. BORDA estimates that the world will produce some 1.8 million tons of trash each day by the year 2025. There's certainly a mountain of garbage waiting to be turned into gold.
Author: Po Keung-Cheung/ss
Editor: Sonia Phalnikar