TURNING RUBBISH INTO ELECTRICITY

Indonesia plans to build large waste incinerators to shrink landfill needs

- Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja Indonesia Correspondent

Garbage scavenger Abdul Hasib starts work at the Bantar Gebang landfill at about 3am, when all the trucks are out for refuelling. He hopes the government will allow scavengers like him to work in the planned incinerator facilities.

Indonesia is planning to build large waste incinerators in 34 places over the next two years to rid the nation of the mountains of rubbish thrown daily into giant landfills.

One of the first waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators, which can burn about 1,000 tonnes of solid waste a day, will be built in the Bantar Gebang district of Bekasi, an official told The Straits Times.

Bantar Gebang is located 25km east of Jakarta and near the country's largest landfill, which spreads over 110ha.

Several more plants are expected to be built in the area.

"We have landfills that have piled up like mountains, such as in Bantar Gebang (that serves Jakarta), and other landfills in Bandung, Surabaya and Bali. This has become a pressing issue," President Prabowo Subianto said on Oct 20 during a Cabinet meeting marking his administration's first anniversary.

He added that during heavy rain, such landfills endanger residents of the surrounding villages.

Jakarta produces some 8,000 tonnes of rubbish daily, comprising mainly household food scraps and plastic scrap. That is nearly 18 times the weight of a Boeing 747 plane and up from some 6,400 tonnes of rubbish a day produced by the city a decade ago.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelagic nation with 17,000 islands, generates 140,000 tonnes of waste a day.

The country has few operating incinerators, including one in Bogor with a capacity of 50 tonnes a day. The only operational large WTE plant is in East Java, with a capacity to burn 1,600 tonnes of waste a day.