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The faces behind Jakarta’s piling waste
Last effort: A child walks on top of a pile of rubble in Kampung Akuarium, North Jakarta on Monday
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span class="inline inline-center">Last effort: A child walks on top of a pile of rubble in Kampung Akuarium, North Jakarta on Monday. Although their houses have been destroyed, several residents are still living in the area.(JP/P.J. Leo)
On a side street of Jakarta, workers dig their shovels into mounds of waste. They comb through the piles to sort out what to take to landfill, an important job in a city with scarce formal recycling systems.
Nearby, vendors sell food and drinks to drivers passing by. The smell of waste does not bother them — this is their normal.
Effective waste management is a major challenge facing modern Jakarta. Rapid population growth over the past 30 years has resulted in increased waste production.
Greeneration Foundation estimates the city produces 6,500 tons of waste per day. Often forgotten is the daily reality of the people impacted the most by this waste — the urban poor.
Sukatun has lived beside a canal in Kebon Jeruk since 1991. The 70-year-old’s presence in the community is commanding. Everyone says hello as she walks past, calling out her nickname, Bu Gaya, which literally means Miss Style.
“If you are a nice person, people will be nice to you,” she says, her kind eyes crinkling into a smile.
While her children live in rural areas, she chooses to stay in the city so she can continue to work. “Sometimes it gets full here, if the rain comes,” Sukatun says, gesturing to the canal full of rubbish, half a meter from her doorway.
Jakarta’s Public Works Department estimates 20 percent of waste ends up in the canals. Although dredging is under way, Sukatun’s house still floods occasionally, the water sometimes reaching halfway up her calf. But her community has banded together to clean up waste, and the problem has been better since then.
Just up the road, Pipit said flooding made the smell from the rubbish much worse. The 19-year-old works at her mother’s stall, just meters downstream from a toilet. “The smell is so bad,” she said.
As Jakarta faces heavy rains, mostly resulting in increased flooding, the challenges faced by people like Sukatun only worsen.
Expert on climate change vulnerability and resilience in urban centers David Dodman said poor waste management might cause already inadequate drainage channels to become blocked, particularly in low-income areas.
He noted how residents of low-income neighborhoods usually generated less waste since they consumed less and were often involved in informal recycling schemes. “So the people that suffer the most are frequently the ones who have contributed least to the problem,” he said.
Greeneration Foundation Program Manager Syir Asih Amanati said in most cases, the impacts of waste went unnoticed until it had accumulated. “Now we can feel the impacts from waste we produce: flooding,” she said. The foundation, supported by both local and central governments, is working toward a waste-free Indonesia by 2020.
The government is also pushing for more waste-to-energy systems to help address waste issues despite a Supreme Court ruling against the move last year.
Indonesian Forum for Environment (Walhi) campaign manager Dwi Sawung said current government policy on waste management was not working because it was not tailored to particular contexts.
He said incinerating waste, for instance, would not work effectively as the waste was too wet to burn. His organization is pushing for a more community-based waste management model.
With Jakarta’s largest landfill predicted to reach capacity in 10 years and no space for another landfill, some communities are taking matters into their own hands.
TPA Rawa Kucing, a community-based waste-management site in Tangerang, hopes to turn landfill into forest and waste into energy.
The site’s manager, Tegan Suripto, said government assessment of the program was already underway as part of a national rollout. “We have this huge amount of land to turn into the city forest, while making this land an entertainment and recreational site,” he said.
While other sanitary landfills cover the waste with a black membrane, the Rawa Kucing site has planted a forest on top, including plants that are safe to eat.
Tegan encouraged people to effectively manage their waste, believing that fostering community spirit is the best hope for Jakarta’s urban poor. “I have faith Indonesia will become better, with this concern and awareness about this issue because Indonesia is the lungs of the Earth.”
The writers visited Indonesia with support from the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan mobility program. Stefanny Widjaja and Cindy Gulla contributed for this story.
