Pondering Point

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A small solution with a major effect: a simple, practical, and cheap method of waste disposal, which can be implemented in each household; reduced organic waste and even greener gardens!

The amount of waste that human activity produces increases by the second. Meanwhile, available land for its treatment and containment becomes scarcer. Imagine a world covered in garbage. Management of waste is an effort to save our future.

One scorching hot day, I met up with a friend who conveyed an interesting idea. He said that there was a method of household waste management that was very simple and practical. You only need a large barrel, that's all! It was such an interesting topic to engage in, that even the sweat and heat of the day seemed to subside. I was eager to know about this new idea and how it was supposed to work. So my friend agreed to introduce me to the person who had already implemented this method.

Several days later we met up at a marble workshop. The person that my friend wanted to introduce me to happened to be the owner of this shop, and his name was Moeliono. Not long afterwards we sped over to his house in one of the corners of Denpasar.

In the yard there was this large barrel, the kind that is often seen being used by the roadwork men laying asphalt on the roads around the island. The barrel was closed and placed at the corner of the yard with a support underneath. And at the bottom a tap was fixed to it.

As Moeliono explained, he lives with six family members. Every day his family throws their organic waste into this barrel. From dinner leftovers of rice, unused vegetable trimmings, corn husks, eggshells and bones. It was now six months since the barrel came into use and it hasn't even filled up. Every two weeks he would open the tap and collect the fluid — liquid organic compost, which he then used to fertilize his garden. And indeed when we glanced around his garden was lush and his lawn green.

Well... indeed it is such a simple, practical, and cheap method of waste disposal. And it can be implemented in each and every household. You only need to prepare a large barrel with a cover, fix a tap at its bottom, and make a breathing hole on top. With these simple methods organic waste can be reduced, and you can recycle in your own home, and get a much greener garden.

Garbage treatment in Indonesia is still a state issue. The government, through the municipal department of cleanness and landscaping services employ their garbage trucks every single day. Research carried out by the department reveals that the populace in the large cities produces up to 4 liters of garbage daily with the majority coming from households (79,38%) while the remainders are markets, commercial areas and waste from public facilities. In the year 2004, household waste volume in Denpasar reached 2,200 cubic meters daily.

The garbage trucks gather the garbage at a temporary collection point and transport it to the final dump. All kinds of garbage is piled into one area. It can be imagined that the stench from this area reaches a radius of a hundred meters, as well as the subsequent impact it imposes on the environment and people's health.

In general there are several methods of waste treatment, namely ridding and recycling. Getting rid of garbage is done via landfill or incineration. Throwing garbage away in a dump is the easiest and fastest way. Back in the times when there was no plastic present, throwing it away was no problem. Yet now when the hard-to-break-down material has prevailed, it has indeed become problematic.

Incineration is also not a good way out as deficient burning could occur. Not to mention air pollution as the byproduct and the disturbance it causes among the communities in its surroundings.

Recycling is the most successful and suggested alternative. Plastic or non-organic waste is sold to recycling plants, and organic waste can be turned into useful compost.

Households are the largest waste producers on the planet. Unfortunately, in the area of waste management, households are not at the maximum involvement. In recycling they only generally partake in the separation process of organic and non-organic waste. Then the management will only be concentrated onto one specified location.

How effective and efficient it would be if every household could manage their own waste and enjoy the result. We can easily understand that not all children can recycle their old toothbrushes into toys. Or not all people can transform plastic household utensils into shoe racks. But people can transform their leftover meals into compost just as Moeliono does.

Moeliono confesses that he got the idea from Sukamto Hadi Suwito, a compost maker from Jakarta. Sukamto felt disturbed by the mounting garbage near his home and took the initiative of managing the waste himself. He discovered that within the mountains of garbage, decomposing organic waste eventually turned into fluid. This became the beginning of his liquid compost production.

All kitchen garbage is put into a container, so eventually and without the additional interference of humans, the garbage will turn into liquid compost. The only thing is that we cannot determine specifically when the process of decomposition occurs. Sukamto added that the bioactivators that he created can speed up the process.

I brought this new finding home and it was warmly welcomed by my family. I got a barrel from Moeliono and put it to immediate use. I believe that environmental awareness and active involvement in waste management, in at least some small way, can help save the future. «»

Text and photos by Ni Luh Dian Purniawati