VATIS UPDATE Article

The Jakarta Sanitation Agency has launched a new initiative for treating the dangerous garbage, involving deploying special trucks to collect it in cooperation with a private waste-treatment company. Sanitation agency head Isnawa Adji said that cooperation was being considered with waste-treatment company PT Prasadha Pamunah Limbah Industri, Indonesia. Isnawa said the company had treated only industrial waste in the past but was open to working with the administration. It had actually already looked into treating electronic waste, or e-waste, but had found it difficult to collect.

“We plan to help the company collect e-waste while it pays compensation to the garbage facilities,” said Isnawa. He added that e-waste such as computers, refrigerators, batteries and other broken electronic devices still had value, so residents could receive compensation. Isnawa said the agency would use two ways to collect the e-waste. The first one is residents can actively submit their e-waste through their local garbage facilities. He added that Jakarta currently had only 380 garbage facilities, not many considering the number of community units in the capital city, which is up to 2,700.