Green group urges recyclable packs

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Environmental group have called on the government to issue a policy to push consumer goods producers to use recyclable packaging to help deal with Jakarta's long-standing waste problem.

The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) said such a move would be crucial because about 80 percent of the waste sent to the Bantar Gebang dump site in Bekasi, West Java, came from Jakarta households.

"Jakarta will never be able to resolve its waste problem unless producers are told to use eco-friendly wrappers for their products," said Slamet Daroyni, the executive director of Walhi's Jakarta chapter.

"And it's also not fair to merely blame households for creating the waste problems. With more eco-friendly product packaging, household waste would have less of an impact on the environment," Slamet said.

Walhi's statement has come as a response to the ongoing deliberation by a House of Representatives special committee on a new bill on waste management.

The first-ever bill -- which is scheduled to be passed this year -- would give the highest authority for handling waste to the provincial administration. Walhi has argued such a move would be a setback because centralized authority was more a more effective way of managing waste.

"Business permits for consumer product manufacturers operating in the country are granted by the central government and so (the central government) plays a very important role in waste management. Coordination must, as a result, be under the vice president or at least a minister," he said.

Slamet said that in Malaysia waste problems were overseen by the deputy prime minister with the involvement of 11 government departments.

Slamet said the government also had to regulate major businesses such as shopping malls, apartments and hotels in order to set up the trash management facilities needed to deal with the garbage.

"The facilities would be used to sort garbage for composting so that there would be no need to send everything to Bantar Gebang dump site," he said.

Household waste management is a problem in cities across the country, and many believe it is a key cause of contamination in Jakarta's water supply.

A number of environmental group have tried to educate people on separating recyclable material from their garbage before sending it to the dump. But such efforts have failed to take hold.

The draft of the new waste management law stipulates that organic garbage should be sorted from non-organic garbage at its source.

It also states that residents are obliged to limit, reduce and manage their waste and prohibits dumping in certain areas.

Importing waste into Indonesia now carries a fine of Rp 1 billion or a three-year jail term.

Jakarta currently dumps 6,000 tons of mostly household garbage in landfill in Bekasi, West Java, each day. The administration pays Bekasi a management fee of US$5.60 per ton of garbage to use the dump.

The administration says its uses advanced technology in each municipality to manage up to 4,000 tons of the garbage. The city administration earlier introduced a high-tech waste management facility in Bojong, Bogor, but nearby residents opposed to the site and forced its closure.