Ceritalah | As the waste piles higher in Jakarta’s vast landfill, the Western lie about recycling is further exposed
- At the end of 2017, China banned the import of waste materials and an entire ‘do-gooder’ ecosystem collapsed as a result
- Now the landfills of Southeast Asia are overflowing and the West has no credible solution to a problem of its own making
Bantar Gebang is the largest uncovered landfill in Southeast Asia – a vast, 120-hectare moonscape of toxic, foul-smelling waste serving the greater Jakarta region, which is home to 32 million people. The landfill holds an estimated 39 million tonnes of garbage, with 7,000 tonnes added daily. It should reach its capacity of 49 million tonnes by 2021, if not before.
Ibu Suki Sri, 52, started scavenging at the facility when it first opened 30 years ago. Back then the rubbish was deposited in a series of craters left behind by quarrying activity. Now, Bantar Gebang from a distance resembles 10 small hills.
Ibu Sri no longer combs through the trash herself. She has become a collector, managing a team of scavengers who in turn hunt for plastic bottles, straws, medical plastic containers (low density polythene/HDPE plastic), shoes, aluminium, metal and tin. Once sorted, graded and cleaned, the trash has some economic value: a sack of plastic bottles can be sold for 5,000 rupiah/kg (US 35 cents). HDPEs fetch 7,000 rupiah/kg.
Ibu Sri is unconcerned by the prospect of Bantar Gebang closing.
“I don’t think Bantar Gebang will be closed any time soon,” she says. “But if it does, I’ll just move to another dumpsite. Wherever the trash goes, I’ll follow.”
There are Bantar Gebangs all over Southeast Asia: Tondo in Metro Manila, Da Phuoc in Ho Chi Minh City. They are testament to a fundamental flaw of the economic growth and prosperity narrative widely accepted as the gospel truth. The unfettered consumerism and consumption that underpins our lives is unsustainable.
Every toothpaste tube, shampoo bottle, yogurt carton, confectionery wrapper and flimsy pink plastic shopping bag ends up somewhere like Bantar Gebang, Tondo or worse, floating somewhere on the open seas.