Jakarta – The government has revealed that the waste management rate in various regions of Indonesia has only reached around 10 percent, with landfills across the country projected to reach maximum capacity by 2030 unless urgent and radical measures are taken.
Deputy Environment Minister Diaz Hendropriyono stated that Indonesia's critically low waste management rate resulted in 34 million tonnes of waste polluting the environment annually.
"The impact is far-reaching. We have found microplastics in rivers, water sources, placentas and even breast milk," he said on Tuesday, as reported by Antaranews.
He added that most landfills in Indonesia still use an open dumping system, which significantly contributes to methane emissions, a greenhouse gas that traps up to 34 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period, making it a major contributor to global warming.
"It's not too late to fix this, as long as the government, the business sector and the public work together to improve our waste management system," Diaz said.
Ambitious target
In 2017, then-president Joko "Jokowi" Widodo issued a presidential regulation that set a bold target for Indonesia to achieve 100 percent waste management by the end of 2025.
The regulation stipulates that 70 percent of waste should be properly managed through sorting, collection and conversion into raw materials or energy sources, while the remaining 30 percent is to be reduced through recycling initiatives.
In early 2024, data from the National Waste Management Information System (SIPSN), operated by the Environment Ministry, showed that only 60.2 percent of waste was properly managed in 2023, leaving the remainder unmanaged.
Then a recent policy recalibration slashed the realization to 39 percent in December last year, as the ministry no longer accounts for unmanaged landfills in waste handling statistics to reduce reliance on open dumping, a practice deemed environmentally harmful.
On Sunday, Environment Minister Hanif Faisol Nurofiq disclosed that inspections of 343 landfills, conducted as part of efforts to achieve the 2025 waste management target, revealed that the actual waste management rate at these sites is only around 9 to 10 percent.
"This figure was calculated by evaluating the availability and capacity of recycling and recovery facilities at each landfill, as well as how effectively they were utilized," he explained.
Recently, President Prabowo Subianto issued a new presidential regulation that extends Indonesia's target for achieving 100 percent waste management to the year 2029.
According to Hanif, Indonesia generates 56.6 million tonnes of waste annually, which is deposited in 550 landfills across the country.
Hanif also revealed that about 10.8 million tonnes, or nearly 20 percent from national waste, was plastic. But the national recycling rate only reached 22 percent.
Java Island has the highest recycling rate at 31 percent, followed by Bali-Nusa Tenggara at 22.5 percent and Sumatra at 12 percent.
"The waste management system in Indonesia still largely follows a linear approach which is simply collecting, transporting and dumping the waste. If no significant measures are taken to improve management, landfills nationwide are projected to reach or exceed their full capacity by 2030," Hanif said.
Aside from the poor waste processing rates at landfills, the scarcity of public waste disposal and management facilities across the country has led many people to burn their household waste openly, creating a whole slew of health problems.
A report on household waste management in the latest edition of the World Risk Poll, produced by Lloyd's Register Foundation and published in September last year, found that 48 percent of households in the country burn their waste, despite the practice being prohibited.
Open burning of waste has been proven detrimental to both the environment and the people due to the atmospheric release of black carbon, "a key contributor to global warming, as well as 'forever chemicals' that can be carried long distances and harm people's health", the report says.
Source: https://asianews.network/waste-processing-rate-in-indonesia-only-reaches-10-percent