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City to handle garbage management by itself
Although the contract termination with Bekasiâs Bantar Gebang landfill operator PT Godang Tua Jaya (GTJ) has not yet been finalized, the Jakarta administration is gearing up to independently manage the capitalâs garbage
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lthough the contract termination with Bekasi's Bantar Gebang landfill operator PT Godang Tua Jaya (GTJ) has not yet been finalized, the Jakarta administration is gearing up to independently manage the capital's garbage.
Jakarta Sanitation Agency head Isnawa Adji said during a discussion on low-carbon waste management recently that his agency would try to tackle the garbage of the city efficiently to lessen its dependency on Bantar Gebang.
Isnawa said the city administration would soon announce the winner of the bidding process for the intermediate treatment facility (ITF) in Sunter, North Jakarta.
'We plan to hold the groundbreaking ceremony for the ITF in Sunter next month or in March,' he said.
ITF Sunter was initiated by former Jakarta governor Fauzi Bowo, but the sluggish bidding process saw the project halted for years.
He added that city-owned property developer PT Jakarta Propertindo (Jakpro) would also build another ITF in Cakung Cilincing, North Jakarta. 'If we have two or three ITFs with a capacity of 1,000 tons, we can cut by 50 percent the garbage amount transferred to Bantar Gebang,' he said.
Isnawa said the agency would also intensify efforts to treat garbage upstream. 'We have the garbage bank information system dubbed 'Sibas,' where residents can submit the trash they collect to any garbage bank in Jakarta,' he said.
According to Isnawa, the city of 10 million people produces 6,700 to 7,000 tons of garbage a day. 'We need large [funds] just to transfer the garbage to Bantar Gebang,' he said.
The city administration spends at least Rp 400 billion in annual fees to GTJ to handle city trash in Bekasi.
Past experience showed that Jakarta's garbage treatment system was very fragile, he said. 'We could not send our garbage to Bantar Gebang for just three days, and the city was in a mess. It took a week to normalize conditions.'
The Bekasi administration previously banned dump trucks from Jakarta to enter their area after the Bekasi Transportation Agency seized six Jakarta garbage trucks for traveling to Bantar Gebang outside their designated operating hours.
Jakarta is about to terminate the contract with GTJ after a report from the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) found the company failed to comply with all the clauses in the contract.
Agus P. Sari, who chairs the working group on funding instruments at the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) task force, said ITFs using incinerators had been abandoned by many countries as they were not safe for the environment.
'If the city administration still wants to use incinerators, it must ensure that the combustion is above 1,000 degrees Celsius,' he said, adding that otherwise the process would produce hazardous gas.
According to Agus, the safest waste treatment is carbonization and gasification.
