INDONESIA: Waste Composting Project Blazes Cleaner Path

JAKARTA, Mar 11, 2010 (IPS) - Battling the pain from a boil on his left thigh, 45-year-old Inggit Tukino pulled his two-wheeled cart through the overcrowded alleys of a slum in Rawabebek, Penjaringan hamlet in here North Jakarta.

"Garbage, garbage!" he shouted, announcing his arrival at every house.

Upon hearing his voice, the residents, mostly women and children, rushed out and placed solid household waste into Tukino’s wooden cart. He also collected garbage bags hanging outside a number of other homes.

"You came late today," a woman teased Tukino, who on that day did his rounds 45 minutes later than his usual time of 8:30 a.m. Tukino broke into a pale wide grin, grimacing from the week-old boil.

"Almost everybody in the neighbourhood knows me and understands why I am doing this job," said the father of three.

Tukino, who finished a vocational course, is one of two volunteers in charge of a pilot composting project called Mercy Corps, initiated by a U.S. humanitarian organisation at Rawabebek neighbourhood here in the northern part of the capital in 2007.

After collecting solid waste – both organic and non-organic ones – from the community every day, Tukino brings this to a composting house located under a section of Jakarta’s elevated inner-city highway.

Inside the 590-square-metre, fully fenced centre, Tukino and a fellow volunteer, 61-year-old Yatini, sift the organic wastes from the non-organic ones. The organic wastes are later milled and put into 20-litre plastic composters, while the non-organic ones, mostly plastics, are recycled into bags, keychains, notebook covers, laptop bags and other accessories.

"The milled wastes are kept in composters for seven to eight weeks," Yatini said. "Wastes that have become dark rich soil are put in plastic bags ready to be sold, while those that are not yet decaying are placed back into composters," the mother of eight added.

According to Mercy Corps project officer Triyono (one name), the Penjaringan Composting House, known locally as Rumah Kompos, treats 1,200 tonnes of solid household waste every month.

That is still a miniscule amount out of the 6,000 metric tonnes of waste per day produced in Jakarta, a megacity of some 16 million people.

"We are under no illusion that the project will resolve the capital’s waste problem once and for all," Triyono said. "All we want to do is reduce waste and clean the environment as well as provide economic opportunities by selling compost fertiliser."

Most of the city’s waste are dumped at Bantar Gebang in neighbouring Bekasi, West Java, but others end up in sewage systems, flood canals, and rivers that crisscross the capital. As a result, flash floods are regular features during the rainy season, bringing traffic to a complete halt.

Even in the Rawabebek neighbourhood, where each of some 800 households produces an average of one kilogramme of solid waste a day, littering is still a common sight.

"It’s really difficult for the residents to separate organic wastes from non- organic ones or to stop littering," Triyono lamented.

But local resident Agus Raden says this is not easy given the lack of space in the community. "Most of the people here are lodgers, where three or four people cram into a small room. It’s already difficult to find a spot to put their shoes in. How much more for organic and non-organic bins?" he said.

Still, Triyono takes heart from the fact that local authorities have taken over the management of the composting house, including paying the salaries of volunteers Tukino and Yatini.

Local officials have also given tacit support to the otherwise illegal activity by providing the mill used by the center, and attending its activities. Under Indonesian law, building a house or simply staying under a bridge is illegal, but authorities have turned a blind eye to this legal fault in the case of composting facility.

In fact, North Jakarta municipal officials have invited the organisers of Rumah Kompos to give talks on urban waste management or train people from other neighbourhoods on how to manage household waste. Some foreign dignitaries have also visited Rumah Kompos, Triyono added.

Meantime, Rumah Kompos’ organisers have a new challenge -- finding buyers for the more than 90 kg of fertiliser they produce every month from the waste they collect.

This is because local authorities, while privately taking pride in the project, appear reluctant to shift from procuring chemical to compost fertilisers. For their part, private enterprises find the fertiliser output negligible to be taken account into their business planning.

"Most companies and individuals we’ve approached are reluctant to buy the products due to concerns over production sustainability, meaning they are not convinced that we can produce the same amount of compost every month," Triyono explained.

"Composting is not yet commercially viable and brings little economic benefits to the people," he added, even if it is more environment friendly.

Although local officials buy compost fertiliser from them once in a while and some residents use it for their plants, Tukino said, "they do not buy regularly and the amount is still very small".

Rumah Kompos sells one kg of compost fertiliser for 2,500 rupiah (27 U.S. cents).

But more than the income from compost fertiliser, the habit of separating household waste and making compost from them has made a difference to the residents’ lives. They say they do see the benefits of this project, even though it has not resolved all of their waste woes.

Muhasrem, a 55-year-old mother of seven, says the campaign has taught residents to separate organic wastes from non-organic ones.

"The garbage collector (Tukino) has also relieved us of stinky smell and rats," she said, adding that official garbage collectors come only every two or three days, when the garbage is already rotting and rats are all over them.

"We used to burn our waste along the railway track every Saturday or Sunday. We don’t do that any more as the garbage is now collected every day," added Parmi, a 61-year-old mother of two.

As for Tukino and Yatini, Rumah Compos has given them some sustenance. They receive a monthly salary of 250,000 rupiah (27 dollars) each, far below Jakarta region’s minimum wage of 1.2 million rupiah a month.

"The salary helps augment my family’s income," said Tukino, whose wife sells coffee and noodles near the centre’s entrance.

Asked why she volunteered to work in the composting centre, Yatini suggests that she did not really have a choice. "My husband has been without a permanent job for 14 years," she quipped.

But it looks like the two will be busy for a while, because the organisers of Rumah Kompos are thinking of making it the coordinating area for other composting activities Mercy Corps has in west and south Jakarta. (END)

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