Managing Waste: A Learning from Japan

Wearing green T-shirts printed “malu buang sampah sembarangan” (shame of littering), a small group of Japanese expatriates involved in the Jakarta Osoji Club (JOC) voluntarily collects trash in jogging arena of the Gelora Bung Karno (GBK) twice a month on Sunday morning. The club was established on April 29, 2012, by a Japanese businessman named Tsuyoshi Ashida who put concern on trash problem in Jakarta. Local residents who then joined the club have admitted that they felt embarrassed to know that foreigners have been more concerned about the cleanliness of the city’s environment.

 Japanese society’s concern on cleanness is something we probably often hear. However, some facts revealed that during the massive industrialization and economic development era in the 1960s and 1970s, Japan faced some environmental problems. The process of mass production, distribution, and consumption had mounted the amount of solid waste. Since land for landfills were limited, the Japanese government felt the urgency of finding new alternatives to deal with the problems.

During the 1990s, myriad of new laws enhancing 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) have been enacted to reform Japan into a “green” society. To make the laws more effective, the Japanese government mobilized neighborhood association (choinaikai) to introduce the new policies at the grassroots level and utilized volunteers or paid workers to facilitate and monitor the collection area.
After heaps of regulations were enforced, Japan’s compassion on managing solid waste has improved considerably. Household trash is regulated under a strict sorting system which differently set by each municipal government. In Chiba city, for instance, household waste is separated into five categories for collection: combustible trash, incombustible trash, toxic waste, recyclable materials, and bulky items. Some other cities even set more than 10 categories of trash.
During my first months living there, I found that this sorting scheme was quite complicated. To throw away a PET bottle for example, I had to separate the bottle from its plastic label and cap before it could be put at the trash collection point on a scheduled day. Sometimes we have to measure certain trash to make sure either the trash goes to ‘recyclable materials’ or ends up as ‘bulky items’.
Japan’s solid waste management focusing on 3R has been considered success. Between the year 2000 and 2009, total volume of municipal solid waste could be reduced 15.6 percent while waste volume generated per person per day decreased 16.1 percent (MOEJ, 2012).
Conversely, above all factors which contribute to Japan’s success in recycling and reducing solid waste, perhaps the most effective tool is ‘brain-storming” through public education programs at all levels about the negative impact of garbage on environment and the benefit it can bring if managed properly.
I hardly ever saw janitors in schools, public offices, or even department stores. No one in food courts would clean up our waste after we finished our meals. We should throw the trash in the bins provided and return the cutlery by our self. At school, all clean-up tasks were mostly done by students, guided and supervised by the teachers.
Waste disposal and waste management have become crucial issues in our country and Jakarta to be more specific. According to Statistics Indonesia, total solid waste produced from 380 cities in Indonesia in 2011 reached more than 80,000 tons per day; with approximately 6,000 tons were contributed by Jakarta alone. This number has been increasing every year and if it is not to be taken seriously, our next generation will only bear its adverse impacts.
The government itself is not without anticipation though the commitment to manage trash is still questionable. We have laws and master plans on solid waste management which also enhance the 3R scheme and sanitary landfills program yet the implementation is still far from effective. About 90 percent of total solid waste in Indonesia is not recycled. In 2011, only 6.5 percent total solid waste in Jakarta was recycled, mostly by private community groups.
Moreover, according to Act No.18 year 2008 of the Constitution, every landfills operating as open dumps has to be closed or reconstructed within five years as they do not meet sanitary requirement. In fact, many open dumps still remain up till now.
If we take a lesson from Japan, an effective solid waste management requires not only active participation from all levels of societies but also a strong commitment from government. The government should put waste problems into one of its priorities and reassess the existing policies. More funds also need to be allocated by central government in disposal management sector. Hitherto, the allocation is insufficient since it is only sourced from local government budgets and household collection fees. Local governments may also engage business associations to invest more on waste management projects.
Another thing that we can learn from Japan is to mobilize non-governmental bodies, from local community groups, academic groups, religious leaders, professional experts, until home-stay mothers and retirees who may have significant influence over its members to disseminate discourses about the harmful impacts garbage can bring and the importance of recycling. Not many of us are actually aware on what happens to our garbage after it is collected and probably only smaller amount of the knowledgeable do really care about the potential resource of garbage.
To have a better system of solid waste management by adapting a bit lesson from Japan might be challenging yet promising. In short term, we may not need to sort out garbage like Japan does. Continual massive campaigns and a widespread public education program, like what have been done by the JOC, are the most practical approach to transform society’s habit in dealing with trash. Nonetheless, the actions will not offer much impact if they are not supported by a broader scheme of regulations set by the government.