Middling support from the government and community groups has made it difficult to tackle environmental problems, activists say.
Santo, who planted green belts on the banks of the polluted Krukut River in Central Jakarta, said last week he needed help keeping the area clean.
"More financial assistance is needed," he said during an awards presentation ceremony by Greenmap Jakarta.
Santo, who lives near the river in Bendungan Hilir, Central Jakarta, said he started cleaning up the river by himself, much to the amusement of his neighbors.
"Some of them teased me while I was digging the grounds," Santo recalled.
Because he lacked help and knowledge, he initially burned the waste from the river, which he later realized was the wrong way to go about it.
He finally succeeded in establishing a 4-meter-wide green strip running along a 75-meter stretch of the riverbank.
In 2008, he received financial assistance from the neighborhood head and residents of a nearby apartment building for a fish pond he was building in the area.
"The neighborhood head gave me Rp 1 million *US$100* and the apartment residents gave me Rp 1 million too," Santo said.
The money was enough to build the pond, but Santo said he still needed more to maintain the green area.
One major problem is access to water, he added.
"I still water the area using buckets filled with water from a hand pump," he said.
Greenmap Jakarta honored Santo and three other activists for their efforts to improve environmental conditions in the city.
The three others are Salam, who runs a paper recycling center, Supardi, the man behind the Rawajati urban village in South Jakarta, and Chrisandini, who established a low-cost children's library in Salemba, Central Jakarta.
Salam said he needed a pressing machine to speed up production.
"I still use the manual technique, which means it takes a week to make a sheet of recycled paper," he said.
Salam and his six assistants make recycled paper by mashing waste office paper in a mortar. The molding and drying is also done manually.
A press would also improve the quality of the recycled paper produced, he said.
"Our current products still have plenty of rough fibers in them, so it's mostly only artists who buy them," he said, adding smoother paper would open up a wider market.
Salam also said he faced difficulty marketing his products, because the price was often deemed too high by regular customers.
"Environmentalists might understand why we charge more for a sheet of recycled paper, but the lay customer is often surprised to hear the price," he said.
Salam sells A4 recycled paper for Rp 1,000 a sheet, and A3 for Rp 1,500 a sheet.
By comparison, a ream of 500 sheets of virgin A4 paper costs around Rp 30,000 in stores.
Salam said he once sent a proposal to the Community Empowerment Bureau back in 2003 to ask for financial support, but had yet to get any response. (dis)
