Are we in a state of waste emergency?

In 2015 the Ministry of Environment and Forestry almost declared a state of emergency because of the waste problem. Indonesia is the second biggest contributor to plastic waste in the oceans worldwide. Last month, at a UN environment meeting in Bali Indonesia promised to reduce its waste in the oceans by 70% by 2025. It is a huge task!

People in Indonesia produce an average of 0.7 kilograms of waste per day. This means that 64 million tons per year are mostly dumped into landfills. These dumpsites are not in a good state and are struggling to cope with the ever-increasing waste as the population grows and people consume more and more.

An ever growing mountain of waste

The dumpsite „TPST Piyungan„ in Imogiri is not known to many people. However, about 5000 people try to make a living here by picking up what they can sell (plastic, paper, glass). 433,609,377kg of waste were dumped here in 2016.

The neighbouring villages complain about the smell and the flies. There are literally millions of them that cover everything. When I first enter the heart of the dumpsite, where trucks unload waste from all over Yogya, I have to fight not to vomit because of the smell. Everyone around invested in Wellington boots. What a good idea! You never know what you will step into!

To get a closer picture of what happens here, I come closer to the people that gather around every truck that is being unloaded. They mostly pick up plastic. One woman finds a blouse and tries it on. A man finds a plastic glove that had air blown into it and was tied with a knot, so it looks like a hand. He waves at me and laughs. Actually this is not funny at all as he picked it out of a bag of hazardous hospital waste. There are needles and used tissues. I don’t even want to think about what kind of diseases could be transmitted by touching this.

Most of the pemulung (garbage pickers) don’t wear gloves or any other protection. A city council trainee who works here tells me that the government provides free health services every 3 months.

„I am most afraid of broken glass that hides somewhere and cuts open my hands and arms when I look for plastic“, sighs a lady.

1000 cows „graze“ here permanently to reduce the organic waste. A cow pushes me further into the mountain of garbage. Trucks come and go; twice I have to jump out of their way at the last second. A calf is not as lucky. It gets hit by a truck. Two women carry it away in a wheelbarrow. People keep on picking.

The trucks are weighed when they enter the dumpsite. They pay monthly, depending on how heavy their load is. This is financed by the fees that households pay for the service of getting their waste picked up. As a family of four, we pay 30,000 Rp a month. Not everyone can afford that. Therefore, people still burn their waste. There is still a long way to go, but some small progress is being made.

We will report about that in our next blog, so stay tuned!

Plastic in the oceans

Some weeks ago, we spent a night in Parangtritis. It was pouring down that night. When we woke up, the clouds were gone, but the beach looked like a dump-site. The waste that people upriver in Yogyakarta had thrown into the rivers had been swept into the ocean and part of it was being washed ashore by the waves.

Globally, 32% of the 78 million tons of plastic packaging produced annually flows into the oceans. This means that every minute, one garbage truck of plastic is “thrown” into the seas. If this continues, this could mean that by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans.

Just the tip of the iceberg

Most of the plastic in the oceans is not washed back to the shore, but creates gigantic garbage swirls. In the midst of the ocean you will find huge circular sea currents, which absorb the plastic waste and rotate it constantly. The most famous garbage swirl is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the North Pacific, which is growing every year. It has reached the size of Kalimantan and Sumatra combined.

In every km2 of the ocean, you can find up to 46,000 pieces of plastic waste. The amount of plastic floating at the surface is so big that it can be seen from space – huge garbage „carpets“ that move with the currents. However, the plastics floating at the surface are only the tip of the iceberg. More than 70 percent of the plastic waste sinks to the seabed. Only 15% is washed back to the land. If you visit some beaches in Bali these days it is hard to imagine that it is only that small percentage. There are plastic bags, old plastic shoes and all kinds of waste along the once picture-perfect stretches of sand.

A disastrous fate 

Coastal inhabitants and sea creatures are suffering from the plastic overload. 267 marine species are directly affected by the plastic waste, according to a report by the United Nations Environment Programme. Turtles get trapped in old fishing nets and nylon strings, and they feed on plastic bags, as they confuse them with jellyfish. Toxic additives in the plastic that dissolve into the sea affect the oceans’ flora and fauna. Partly decomposed plastic particles can be found everywhere in our oceans. Fish, shrimp and small organisms such as plankton eat them and so they come back through the food chain to human beings in the end.

Read more: http://www.oceanconservancy.org/our-work/marine-debris/mckinsey-report-files/full-report-stemming-the.pdf

What can we personally do about this shocking development? Stay tuned and follow us on http://www.mysemar.wordpress.com