Bogor, West Java (Indonesia Window) – Japan’s Provincial Administration of Osaki is interested in studying and implementing waste management in Indonesia, Secretary General of the Indonesian Waste Bank Association (Asobsi) Wilda Yanti told Indonesia Window at an exclusive interview in Sentul, West Java, recently.

According to Wilda, the cost of waste management in Japan was relatively expensive, amounting to around Rp1.5 million per month per house.

"For people in Japan, this figure is costly. Therefore, they want to learn how to manage waste at a lower cost and involve people," Wilda, who is also the CEO of PT Xaviera Global Synergy's waste management company, explained.

She further said one of the efforts to reduce waste management cost is through waste bank where people can actively participate, from collecting, sorting and utilizing household wastes at home to delivering residual wastes that cannot be further processed to the bank.

"Indonesia is the first country to implement waste bank in the world. The concept is unique. We emphasize that those who make wastes are the ones who are responsible for them,” Wilda said.

She pointed out, by involving people from the first chain of waste management since at home, the costs for those activities can be reduced.

"With rubbish that has been sorted from home, we could reduce the costs for workers at landfills, shorten the time of processes as they have been sorted beforehand, and reduce the costs for transportation of garbage-collecting trucks and workers because there is less waste to be transported from houses to landfills," Wilda explained.

For people who take part in the waste bank actvities, they can exchange the sorted wastes to money or other products, such as fish, meat, cooking oil, or fertilizer.

Reporting: Indonesia Window