An 80% Reduction in Waste? Get Real!
In October 2007, Bali's then Governor Dewa Beratha declared, "If we don't take this waste problem seriously by 2015, Bali could become a garbage warehouse." Unprecedented remarks by the top man on the island but encouraging to see the problem being addressed at the highest levels of office.
Tourism is the mainstay of Bali's economy but is also a major producer of solid waste. The tourism Industry bears a heavy responsibility for much of the trash generated in southern Bali with an estimated 60% of it being dumped illegally. "Most local waste haulers do not process the waste properly and dump it instead in the mangrove forest or empty lots," says Nyoman Sutarma, founder and director of Jimbaran Lestari, a waste recycling organisation based in Jimbaran in southern Bali.
He speaks from experience. Before establishing Jimbaran Lestari with the help of local environmental organisation, The Wisnu Foundation, he too would dump trash anywhere he could. He had no choice, since the hotels required him to pay for the trash he collected and he was forced to dump illegally to make it financially viable. But with the help of the Wisnu Foundation he was able to negotiate service contracts with the hotels and today he operates very differently.
Jimbaran Lestari is the only fully registered legal waste management company in Bali that recycles, composts and properly disposes of household and hotel garbage. It was initially established in Jimbaran in 1994 in response to the rampant illegal dumping of tourism industry waste and since then has established a recycling centre comprised of a Material Recovery Facility to recycle paper, plastic, magazines, newspapers, paperboard, glass, metal, aluminium, milk carton / juice boxes as well as a composting plant to deal with organic and garden waste.
Jimbaran Lestari has a formal integrated waste management system whereby solid waste is picked up daily from the hotels then brought to their recycling facility to be processed. The inorganic waste is sorted into categories that include paper, high and low density plastics, cartons, magazines, newspapers, glass, etc, and recycled. Food scraps or wet waste is sold to pig farmers and garden waste is composted and returned to the hotels to be used on their gardens.
Jimbaran Lestari process about 25 truckloads a day. In the end, for every five trucks of garbage only one truck goes to the government landfill. By these calculations and with a little more money from Bali businesses and the central government, waste processing could be vastly increased and we could reduce dumping by up to 80%, thus protecting Bali's fragile natural environment and the tourism dollars she relies so heavily upon.
www.jimbaranlestari.com
