Indonesia has been entering the new era in managing the municipal solid waste (MSW) since on May 2008 the parliament has approved The Law of Municipal Solid Waste Management. Based on the law, there are two main activities in managing MSW, firstly is waste minimizing that actually adopt the 3R principle and secondly is waste handling that consist of segregation, collection, transportation, processing and final treatment. The big challenge in implementing this law is to segregate the waste into 2 or 3 parts particularly to separate the waste from the kitchen including food waste or organic compostable matter with other kind of valuable waste (paper, plastic, metal, glass) that potentially can be recycled.
The waste segregation is a big challenge due to the people’s habit that still do the traditional way which only perform 3 steps : collect, transport and dispose, and then forget it. Most of peoples are also still perform ‘NiMBY’ in handling their waste. So the situation is very bad, particularly in the big cities that almost all final disposal are still apply open dumping system that in the law is prohibited. This bad and dangerous system has cause of sliding in certain dumping site and kill more than 140 peoples. That is why the formulation of an objective of the MSW Management Law is to enhance community health and environment quality, and to utilize msw as new resources / circulated waste.
Early this year Ministry of Environment (MoE) of Indonesia promoted The Garbage Bank as the new strategic program. This new innovative idea has enforce the peoples to segregate the waste from it’s source / at home and come to the bank to make a deposit based on his/her waste’s value. This innovative idea has also create a new job and increase the people income, especially for the poor. Only take less than 2 years, now the number of Garbage Bank (Indonesia : Bank Sampah) through out Indonesia is around 480 units and in the near future the number will increase rapidly since many head of district and City Mayor have declared to develop Garbage Bank in their region at least 100 units each. In some places many big company both state own and private enterprises has involve in this activities. The garbage bank has also motivated the business actors to develop 3R industry and implement EPR by applying take back system. The new era has come, the Garbage Bank is not only encourage the people to separate the garbage, but also to encourage the business actors to develop 3R industry and apply EPR. Hope in the near future enhancing process of MSW Management in Indonesia will run smartly.
Key word : segregate, garbage bank and the new era of MSW management in Indonesia
*) by Mohammad Helmy, Vice Chairman of Indonesia Solid Waste Association (InSWA)
