Japanese tech for cleaner RI slaughterhouses

Adianto P. Simamora , The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Fri, 01/29/2010 10:25 AM

The government of Japan has offered a co-benefit cooperation to develop eco-friendly slaughterhouses and landfills to cope with climate change and pollution in Indonesia.

Japan would provide technology to capture emissions from slaughterhouses and landfills in Indonesia and alter them as energy sources to generate electricity for citizens.

“But the total emission cuts from projects belong to Indonesia,” Tuty Hendrawaty, deputy assistance on pollution control from the agro industry sector at the State Environment Ministry told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

She said that pilot projects would be in slaughterhouses in Palembang, South Sumatra and the landfill in Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan.

“Experts from Japan and Indonesia have conducted feasibility studies on the planned projects,” she said.

The governments of Indonesia and Japan organized a two-day workshop on co-benefit cooperation in Jakarta on Thursday, attended by officials from several provinces.

Slaughterhouses and landfills are among the major sources of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, especially in developing countries due to poor management.

Untreated wastewater often flows into rivers, which are the main sources of clean water for the public.

Slaughterhouses and landfills also carry diseases that can be transferred to humans, while wastewater generates methane gas.

Methane is reported as far more dangerous to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

The Japanese government launched the “Cool Earth 50” initiative in 2007 to establish a global warming management framework with the long-term target of halving greenhouse gas emissions until 2050.

Japan and Indonesia signed a joint statement on environmental protection through the co-benefit approach in 2007, including the implementation of the 3R (reduce, reuse and recycle).

Since then, Indonesia produced massive campaigns on the 3R concept to reduce the size of landfills.

Data from the State Environment Ministry shows more than 60 percent out of the 170 surveyed cities in 2008 relied on poorly managed landfills.

It said that many cities only disposed around 65 percent of daily waste at the final disposal site with the remaining illegally dumped in rivers or at parks and were illegally burned.

The report said Indonesia produced a large amount of methane gas from garbage.

Producing around 45 million cubic meters of garbage annually, mostly from metropolitan cities, Indonesia may be producing around 520,000 tons of methane, the report said.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has promised to cut 26 percent of emissions by 2020, of which about 6 percent of emission reduction would be from the waste sector.