| | How to Make the Most of Rubbish |
| | By Geoffrey Lean |
| | |
| |  |
| | The green economy at work: 400 jobs have been created via the recycling |
| | scheme on Bali, which has been extended to Java |
| | |
| 1 | | It’s known as the ‘Island of the Gods’, but it’s sinking under a rising |
| | sea of rubbish. You see garbage almost everywhere in Bali: on the |
| | beaches, dumped by roadsides, clogging rivers and streams and blocking |
| | drainage channels. This has got so bad that it is threatening not only |
| | people’s health, but also that of the economy: two thirds of tourists |
| | surveyed said that it would prevent them from coming back. But, still, little |
| | is collected, and rubbish tips are overflowing. |
| 2 | | And yet, on a disused pig farm not far from the main tourist beaches, a |
| | rubbish revolution is under way; it is spreading throughout Indonesia, and |
| | could have a bearing all over the Third World. I discovered it in between |
| | meetings of the world’s environment ministers on the island last week. |
| | I visited Bali to find out more about how to tackle environmental problems |
| | and watch the green economy at work. So I decided to trace what |
| | happened to the contents of my hotel room wastepaper basket. |
| 3 | | Beneath the corrugated iron roof of an open-ended old pig shed – |
| | amid hundreds of hungry birds – workers were painstakingly handseparating |
| | paper, plastics, glass, aluminium, food scraps, vegetable |
| | matter and other material that can be used again, leaving only the |
| | leftovers to go into the island’s elementary waste disposal system. Every |
| | week, 140 lorryloads of waste arrive. Only 10 leave carrying real rubbish. |
| 4 | | I was shown the operation by Yuyun Ismawati, who started it 12 years |
| | ago, then in her early thirties. An environmental engineer, designing water |
| | supply systems for wealthier areas, she decided to switch to working with |
| | the poor and picked garbage ‘because no one else wanted to touch it’. |
| | She found the pig farmer was paying hotels for their waste – five-star food |
| | scraps for his animals – and persuaded him that recycling it would be |
| | more profitable. Now 25 hotels – including mine – pay him to take their |
| | garbage away. Almost all is recycled: food scraps are bought by pig |
| | farmers and grass clippings and other vegetation is composted, and |
| | mostly returned to the hotels for flowerbeds. |
| 5 | | This is the green economy in action, providing new employment for |
| | those that need it. It is very basic but it succeeds. If you want a hi-tech |
| | solution in a developing country, you will wait and wait and wait until you |
| | get the money, or big donors to fund it. And even then it may not work. |
| 6 | | A big blue machine, provided by the local government to process the |
| | waste, stands idle in a corner, proving the point. The electricity needed to |
| | power it costs too much: human energy is cheaper, and employs more |
| | people. |
| 7 | | The scheme was the first of its kind in Indonesia. Ms Ismawati has |
| | since established six more. No wonder she won the world’s biggest prize |
| | for grassroots green activists, the Goldman Award, last year. |
| | |
| | Daily Telegraph, 2010 |
