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Local plastic diet gets boost from central government

Indonesia, the biggest plastic polluter in the world after China, plans to provide funds for cities and regencies to significantly reduce plastic waste in their respective areas

Ivany Atina Arbi and Dyaning Pangestika (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, December 7, 2018

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Local plastic diet gets boost from central government

I

ndonesia, the biggest plastic polluter in the world after China, plans to provide funds for cities and regencies to significantly reduce plastic waste in their respective areas.

The plan was revealed by the Environment and Forestry Ministry in front of representatives from 365 cities and regencies across the country, who were attending the fifth national working meeting on waste management earlier this week.

The ministry’s director general for waste management, Rosa Vivien Ratnawati, said the regional incentive funds from the Finance Ministry would be disbursed to 11 selected cities and regencies next year.

Each city and regency would receive up to Rp 11 billion (US$772,013) to develop waste-management programs in their areas. Among the recipients are Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan, Balikpapan in East Kalimantan, Cimahi in West Java, Makassar in South Sulawesi and Surabaya in East Java.

“Therefore, I invite all regional heads in the country to create innovative programs to reduce plastic waste and at the same time improve people’s welfare,” Rosa said. She added that some students in Cimahi had started to pay tuition fees with plastic waste, while a number of residents in Makassar bought staple foods with it.

Based on the environment ministry’s data, the number of plastic bags used in Indonesia has increased over the past 10 years to approximately 9.8 billion per year — 95 percent of which ends up unprocessed.

Meanwhile, a 2016 study led by Jenna Jambeck from the University of Georgia found that Indonesia produced 3.2 million tons of plastic waste annually and about 1.29 million tons of it ended up in the ocean.

While there are still implementation issues, several cities and regencies — including those in Greater Jakarta, have begun to reduce plastic use. The local administrations have issued regulations that limit or altogether ban the use of plastic bags.

Banjarmasin claimed that it had reduced the use of plastic bags by 52 million per month — what amounted to 40 percent of the city’s potential waste — by encouraging people to bring their own reusable bags when shopping.

The city administration also cooperated with convenience stores like Indomaret, Alfamart and Transmart to prevent buyers from using non-degradable plastic bags. The stores even gave some space to local industries to sell their reusable baskets as an alternative, said Banjarmasin Environmental Agency head Muhyar.

The agency head admitted that it had been difficult at the very beginning to change people’s habits and mind sets, but he kept on promoting the idea that “plastic bags are bad for the environment” to Banjarmasin’s
residents.

As the result, people have changed. “More and more residents start to leave plastic bags behind and they bring their own reusable bags whenever they go shopping,” he said.

In the future, the agency plans to invite more traditional retailers to campaign for the anti-plastic-bag movement. It will start next year with two traditional markets, namely Pandu and Teluk Dalam.

Separately, to reduce plastic use in the country, Unilever Indonesia Foundation general manager Sinta Kaniawati said some local industries had committed to using a highly recyclable plastic resin named polyethylene terephthalate as product packaging.

Furthermore, Unilever, one of the country’s biggest consumer goods producers, was currently looking for a chance to market a biodegradable bamboo toothbrush to reduce people’s dependency on plastic.

“Although this is not a new innovation, this kind of product is only produced on a small scale. We need to calculate the production cost so that it could be produced at a larger scale for an affordable price,” Sinta said on Tuesday, adding that Unilever is still creating the prototype.

Aside from looking for alternatives to plastic, Sinta also emphasized the importance of 5R (reduce, reprocess, reuse, recycle and recover) and advised the public to develop an awareness of recycling and reusing plastic.

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