The government must expand the waste transportation service so that it reaches all regions, including villages, to prevent people from throwing waste into the environment, such as rivers, the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) said.

“The government’s job is to expand and increase the service network as much as possible to reach everyone,” an official from BRIN, Wahyu Purwanta, told ANTARA here on Thursday.

“This means that everything has to be transported to the landfill or processing site,” he said.

On average, the waste transportation service rate in Indonesia is still around 40 percent, which means that 60 percent of waste is still not transported to landfills or processing sites, he highlighted.

This has become one of the issues that need to be resolved soon to handle and manage waste comprehensively.

The waste transportation service has reached 60 percent of major and developed cities, however, this does not apply to small cities or villages, where the distance to waste transportation points is greater, he noted.

Usually, waste is collected from an area or community to be disposed in a large container or a tank. Since the container or tank is usually kept far from the residential area, people tend to throw waste into the environment.

Earlier, expert staff to the Environment and Forestry Minister, Winarni Dien Monoarfa, said that strengthening public participation would serve as a strong capital for Indonesia to resolve the waste management issue.

During the “Plastic Waste Management in the Effort to Control Climate Change” webinar on Tuesday, she informed that the public can participate in managing waste through digital-based business platforms that have mostly been developed by youngsters in Indonesia.

The platforms are playing an important role in Indonesia’s waste management industry, starting from creating a waste collection system to a waste management system.

Source: Antara News