After a year processing their garbage into compost and liquid fertilizer, traders in the Gamping fruit and vegetable market in Sleman regency are now taking the next step to produce bioenergy from the waste.
They recently formed a partnership with Yogyakarta-based Gadjah Mada University (UGM), the Sleman regency administration and the Swedish city of Boras to apply technology to turn the waste into bioenergy.
"We will use the bioenergy to generate power, so we won't need to rely solely on state electricity company PLN, with which we frequently experience blackouts," Kusni, the coordinator of the market's waste processing unit, said.
The market, the biggest fruit and vegetable wholesale market in the province, produces up to 15 tons of garbage every day.
For the past year, the traders have, as a cooperative, been independently processing the waste into organic liquid fertilizer and compost. This has not just environmental, but economic advantages.
According to Kusni, before the waste processing facility was established, garbage from the market was dumped in the Piyungan landfill in Bantul. For that the cooperatives had to spend Rp 600,000 (about US$54) for sanitary services every day.
With the waste processing facility, these cost have been lowered to just Rp 200,000.
Thanks to the facility, the vendors of the markets 120 plus fruit and vegetable kiosks, have developed a new sense of cleanliness, as they have to sort organic and non-organic waste.
According to Kusni, the only problem is that the waste treatment technology is manually operated, and the four workers are not able to process the entire volume of garbage.
A worker at the facility, Walidin, 35, said the unit could produce 200 liters of liquid fertilizer and compost, which are sold internally to traders at the market for their gardens.
"Liquid fertilizer is good for plants. I treated my corn and chili plants and the results are better compared to using chemical fertilizer," Walidin said.
However, farmers' heavy dependence on chemical fertilizer has made organic fertilizer their second choice, despite its quality.
"Plants will not give a good harvest if they are not given chemical fertilizer and urea," Walidin said, quoting farmers to whom he offered the organic fertilizer.
With plan to produce bio-energy from the waste however, the garbage processing unit will be shut down for six months to prepare the waste refinery facility. A 600-meter plot is currently being prepared to process waste into bio-energy.
Team coordinator of the waste refinery program Siti Syamsiah, from UGM, said the technology had been adopted from Sweden because 40 percent of waste in Sweden is now turned into bio-energy.
She said a ton of garbage can produce bio-energy which is equivalent to 70 liters of regular petroleum. If the Gamping fruit market produces 10 tons of garbage daily, it could produce bio-energy equivalent to 700 liters of petroleum.
"The bioenergy will be used to generate electricity," Syamsiah said.
Copyright © 2009 The Jakarta Post
