Fidelis E Satriastanti, Jakarta – The State Ministry for the Environment is finalizing regulations that would oblige all companies to manage their waste according to prescribed standards, a senior official announced on Monday.
The ministry is required to issue 11 regulations by the end of this year in order to enforce the 2008 waste management law.
However, it says it has accounted for all of them in three regulations – on waste management, waste reduction and specific waste management – that it will issue later this year.
"The breakthrough in this waste management law is the EPR [extended producer responsibilities], which will push manufacturers to be more responsible for their waste products," said Ilyas Asaad, the ministry's deputy for environmental compliance.
"For electronic appliances, for instance, manufacturers will need to be responsible for what happens once their goods are broken," Ilyas said.
He added that the ministry would add a new clause specifically for the EPR. "Almost all developed countries implement an EPR," he said. "In Japan, for instance, they have some sort of eco-town where all their used electronic appliances are disposed of."
Ujang Solihin Sidik, the interim head of the ministry's waste management unit, cited instant-noodle packaging as one of the more difficult types of waste to manage in the country.
"Plastic noodles wrappers are definitely useless waste because they're not recyclable and they fetch a very low price, which makes it hard for trash scavengers to sell them," he said.
"Around 11 billion noodle wrappers are disposed of every year, which accounts for around 6,400 tons of waste from that industry. So it's a very significant amount of waste," he said, noting that producers have no responsibility to deal with it.
Based on ministry data from 2007, at least six million tons of plastic waste were generated by 194 districts and towns across the country, accounting for 14 percent of the country's 666,000 cubic meters of total waste.
The ministry also estimated that national waste generation amounted to 176,000 tons a day, or an average of 800 grams of waste per person per day.
Ujang said the EPR could be introduced with financial incentives, like a tax break to noodle producers that bought back disposed wrappers. Ujang said enforcement of the EPR should not involve financial or administrative penalties for non-compliant producers, but should instead focus on social punishment – publishing the names of offending companies.
Meanwhile, Sri Bebassari, the head of the Indonesian Solid Waste Association, said the EPR would be a significant step toward waste management, pointing out that the proportion of plastic trash, much of it non-biodegradable, was increasing.
"To date, no one has taken responsibility for that waste, much less the producers, because all this time the pressure to change attitudes has always been directed toward the consumer," she said.
"However, the producers are responsible for churning out [the plastic] so there should be regulations applicable to them in the form of the EPR."
Sri added that producers could also contribute to waste management by providing wrappers that biodegraded in two years rather than 100, which is the case with most wrappers today.
"They could also consider reusing plastic containers, such as water bottles," she said.