October 10, 2024
JAKARTA – The Sarimukti Landfill in West Java, which serves the Greater Bandung area, will face overcapacity by the end of the year, the provincial administration has warned.
West Java administration secretary Herman Suryatman has called on the administrations of Greater Bandung, also known as the Cekungan Bandung (Bandung Basin) area, to act together immediately.
“We are facing the potential of a waste explosion in Cekungan Bandung. This problem can be a disaster in several months if not handled seriously,” Herman said in Bandung as quoted by Antara on Saturday.
The 25-hectare landfill is a waste hub for the surrounding cities and areas, including West Java’s capital of Bandung, one of the country’s most populous cities. The Bandung city administration has estimated that 80 percent of the 1,500 tonnes of waste generated daily by the city are transported to Sarimukti.
The landfill in Cipatat, West Bandung regency receives around 3,000 cubic meters of trash each day from Bandung city, Cimahi city, West Bandung regency and Bandung regency.
At this rate, there will be no space left at the landfill by the end of the year, Herman said.
The official said that the provincial administration was ready to support Greater Bandung administrations to tackle the problem.
“No one should run away from responsibility. We must all be responsible according to our respective duties, both at the provincial and regency and city levels,” he said.
Last year, the West Bandung regency administration declared an emergency status following a fire at the Sarimukti landfill.
The fire first broke out at the landfill on Aug. 19, 2023, and burned at least 16.5 ha of trash.
Regency officials said the fire was triggered by the dry season’s high temperatures, but then-West Java governor Ridwan Kamil said a cigarette thrown by a trash picker onto the landfill was the cause of the fire.
The emergency status was declared after firefighters from regencies and municipalities around West Bandung were unsuccessful in extinguishing the fire completely. The fire was eventually extinguished on Aug. 28.
Official data shows that 37.87 percent of the 14.7 million tonnes of annual waste generated nationwide is not managed.
Most of the untreated garbage ends up in the local environment or illegal dumps, or is burned in open spaces, in violation of the ban on burning garbage as stipulated in the 2008 Law on waste management.
Novrizal Tahar, waste management director at the Environment and Forestry Ministry, acknowledged that the country’s waste management predominantly relied on voluntary community efforts, Kompas reported.
Compounding the issue was that such efforts lacked clear institutional support, measurable performance standards and adequate funding.
His office has issued a waste management road map to develop more public landfills in the next five years, Novrizal said.
After 2030, all landfills in the country will operate at maximum capacity, either as controlled landfills or sanitary landfills. All methane emissions from waste operations must be processed, he said, urging local administrations to allocate at least 3 percent of their regional budget to waste management.