Solid waste management of Jakarta : Indonesia an environmental systems perspective

Abstract: Solid waste management has been one of the critical issues in Jakarta, Indonesia.With enormous amounts of generated waste per day and limited supportinginfrastructure, the city has faced serious threat of environmental deterioration andhealth hazard. It relies on one sanitary landfill only, whose capacity is currently beingexceeded, leading to excessive amounts of solid wastes left untreated in the city. An assessment with a system perspective was carried out, aiming to examine thecomplexity with regard to substance flows, environmental impacts, and energyturnover associated to solid waste management. Different scenarios were constructedand compared using the ORWARE model as the simulation tool. The modelcomprises a number of processes starting from the generation point, all the waythrough means of collection and transportation, treatments e.g. incineration andbiological processes, before final disposal in the sanitary landfill. In this thesis work,an open dumping submodel for the untreated waste was developed to illustrate thegreat impact of this practice. Furthermore, the model comprises materials recycling ofcertain products, which in Jakarta normally are collected in an informal system,involving thousands of scavengers, collectors, and waste suppliers. Externally relatedsystems, e.g. power generation and fertilizer production were also included in theanalysis, to implement a life cycle analysis concept in the delivery of certainfunctional units. The study focused on four different solid waste management scenarios. The first onewas the current situation, while the other three investigated the future state wherebyincreased amounts of generated solid waste were handled either (i) in a similarmanagement system as today, (ii) by a mixture of landfilling, incineration andbiological treatment, and (iii) phasing out all landfilling for biological treatment andincineration. The simulations showed that landfilling is the least preferable choice from anenvironmental point of view. Phasing it out by introducing incineration and biologicaltreatment would be beneficial in reducing the environmental impacts and recoveringnutrients as well as energy. Untreated waste also plays an important role for the totalimpact, and even dominates eutrophication impacts for all scenarios. Improvementscan be achieved by an effective source separation, and an increased collectionefficiency. A further analysis particularly on the economic aspects of the treatment systemsstudied, coupled with the attempt to minimize the data gap in the submodels isrecommended, aiming to acquire an improved analysis for better decision making.Another study, related to valuation of environmental and resource losses caused byuntreated waste would also be important, seeking to analyze the avoided impacts thatcould be obtained by improving future solid waste management.