Sunday, August 01, 2010 09:17 AM
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The city administration is considering using new technology to manage organic waste, Governor Fauzi Bowo said.
Fauzi said Jakarta, which currently uses a landfill system, would switch to an incineration system to combust organic material.
“The technology is being prepared now. We may be able to apply it in the next five years,” he said, speaking at a seminar Thursday on the environment and waste management.
The head of the city’s sanitation agency, Eko Bharuna Subroto, said investors had expressed interest in investing in the technology.
“The problem is location. People are usually reluctant to have a waste management site in their area,” he told The Jakarta Post.
He said his office was considering Marunda industrial area in North Jakarta as an option.
Eko said the city considered using incinerators because the landfill system, which uses the Bantar Gebang dumping site in Bekasi, West Java, required hundreds of hectares of land.
Jakarta and Bekasi administrations signed a deal last year allowing the capital city to use the Bantar Gebang landfill until 2028. The landfill receives about 6,000 tons of garbage every day from Jakarta.
“The incineration technology is suitable for a large city such as Jakarta,” Eko said.
He said Singapore was a textbook example of a city using hi-tech incinerators.
Singapore, he said, could manage 1,000 tons of organic waste everyday using 0.5 hectares of land, and charging a US$50 per ton tipping fee.
Jakarta, Eko went on, would choose a less technologically advanced incinerator suitable for the city’s budget.
The technology, he said, would cost around $100-150 million with a $25 per ton tipping fee, requiring about 6 hectares of land and the capacity to process 1,000 tons of organic waste daily.
“The Jakarta administration is focused on handling floods. Waste management is not a priority,” he said.
To implement the new technology, Eko said the city would need to regulate the separation of organic and non-organic waste, which would then force the city to use two different garbage trucks.
He said his agency and the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) were working on an academic study for a waste management draft bylaw while waiting for a government regulation on the 2008 Waste Management Law.
Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) spokesman Erwin Usman said Walhi was opposed to the incineration technology because it raises concerns of air pollution, which could affect the health of areas residents.
Landfills, he said, remained the best option for Jakarta’s 8.9 million residents. Better waste management at the community level would help the city reduce the amount of garbage, he added.
“There will be problems concerning location, funding and transfer of technology [of the incinerator],” he said.
