Junaidi, Crazy about waste

Junaidi is known as “orang gila sampah” – the man who is crazy about waste.

He may be the first person in the world to pioneer waste management as a gift to a people in crisis. “The Merapi volcano victims were sitting around feeling lost and sad with nothing to do, so I decided to teach them how to deal with the waste accumulating at their refugee centers. Visiting government ministers and refugees looked on in horror as we dug through the waste separating biodegradable and recyclable items. At first, they could not imagine what we were doing,” Junaidi says.

“We taught them how to make money from waste. The refugees have now set up eight waste banks. Government officials have seen how to deal with waste and started to support our efforts.”

One of Junaidi’s self-appointed tasks is to check on government allocation of resources for village-level waste management. Government agencies are often unsure how to allocate their financial and material resources, so officials sometimes end up using materials which are supposed to go elsewhere, for their own purposes.

Many villages in Bantul working with waste have been assisted by Junaidi to get motorcycles, bins and sacks for separating rubbish and mulch machines for compost making. He is the link between the villages and two main government agencies concerned with waste: Public Works (PU), which deals with waste removal, and the Environment Agency (BLH), which deals with waste impacts and reduction. Most of the motorcycles would never have been delivered to the villages if Junaidi wasn’t there, monitoring the situation and checking that the right equipment goes to the right villages.

Junaidi trained as a community development worker and has striven to educate poor villagers to manage waste while lifting themselves out of poverty. His wife, Prita, a trained accountant, fully supports Junaidi’s passions. She jokingly says, “I am the [waste] bank director.”

“In 2003, my front room overlooked a pile of rubbish that neighbors dumped there,” Junaidi says. This troubled him and his family but his neighbors were not prepared to do anything about it. There was no assigned place for rubbish disposal in their low-income housing estate.

In 2005, Junaidi put himself forward as neighborhood headman (RT). “People were pleased that I wanted to be RT. It is unpaid and the tasks are onerous. My primary goal was to clean up the mess in front of my house but none of my neighbors knew this.”

Junaidi tried to recycle and reduce the volume of waste, but his neighbors soon opposed the program. They were used to tossing or burning their rubbish and felt it was too much work to collect, separate and transport waste. “They demanded I stand down as headman. In their minds, waste was not a problem,” Junaidi says.

The number of people living in the neighborhood had tripled by 2007 and the amount of garbage reached a crisis point. In the rainy season the road became an impassable quagmire, a sticky, stinking mess right in front of Junaidi’s house.

Junaidi modified the waste management system of a nearby village to base it on women’s rotating credit groups (arisan). “Forty households met every four weeks and people brought their separated waste,” says Junaidi. “We held a lottery and the winner received everybody else’s waste, worth approximately Rp 30, 000 [US$3.40] per month.”

The system worked for a year but then collapsed when the value of waste dropped from Rp 30,000 to Rp 7,000 per month. Junaidi had tried to instill a feeling that they were cleaning up the waste to save the environment, but it seems money was still a major motivator.

Waste usually travels through at least five hands, from the “tukang rosok/ pemulung” (scavenger) to the “pengumpul” (collector) to the “pelapak” (higher level gatherer) and then to the distributor who brings it to the recycling factory. The pemulung pays 50 percent less than the distributor. Junaidi only sells to a distributor because otherwise they get too low a price.

After studying a waste bank in Badegan pioneered by Bambang Suwerda in 2009, Junaidi started a similar system in his area. Individuals or groups could become members, bringing their separated waste to the bank – plastic, paper, bottles, metal, aluminum – where it is weighed and entered into each member’s bank book. When the waste is sold, its cash value is written into the bank books. Members normally withdraw their savings only once a year.

“Between 2009 and 2010 we found that our banks had collected Rp 20,000,000. The Merapi refugees have accumulated between Rp 2,500,000 and Rp 3,000,000 in their bank books,” says Junaidi.

“Bank Sampah in Badegan only allowed saving but we decided to allow our members credit,” Junaidi continues. “People can borrow Rp 50,000 and pay it back over two months. They can receive a composter on credit worth Rp 50,000. Members pay back the Rp 50,000 by bringing waste to the bank three times a week for two months. It does not matter how much waste they bring each time… but they have to bring some at least three times a week. If a member fails to pay back the Rp 50,000 in waste in two months, they cannot borrow again.”

Junaidi says, “between 2007 and 2010 we started to get awards for our clean and green environment and this encouraged our community to continue our programs.” Today fifty-eight households (90 percent of Junaidi’s neighborhood) recycle their waste.

“We make compost in each household and are learning to make briquettes out of leaves. We have changed our program from being based on rotating credit to a waste bank and now a cooperative. Because of our preparedness to change and innovate, the young are interested and want to join us now”.