Communication Challenge Of Waste Processing In Indonesia

Waste management is one of many undeveloped problem, communication is one step ahead to solve it.

Indonesia has been claimed as the second country that has the most plastic waste especially founded in the ocean by Jambeck (2008). Some researchers also found out that compared to other asian country such as Korea, Indonesian people has the most least concern in waste processing. When we heard about waste processing, most of us pictured it as a place where huge machines process thousands and various kind of waste. And many workers are hired to do the dirty jobs, even for the low salary.

According to the evolution of Information Technologies (IT) from digital era into the intelligence era, since 2010 it has been the year of intelligent technologies. So, it has been 9 years and our country is still left behind from technologies. In this case, for the waste processing, yet our country has been the slowest to follow along. Yes, there are plenty of startups and innovation to transform trash into valuable object such as money or material across the civilization and also industries. But none of them grew bigger until now, for instance, a “Waste Bank” in one of Indonesia popular cities, Bandung. For daily production, they still using mechanical technologies that require minimum of technical skill to operate. Even though it has been supported by the government, it seems like the waste are getting more uncontrollable and increasing along the population. And their support is not enough to fulfill the demand and the facilitation of the Waste Bank.

According to hierarchy of waste processing, disposal, is the most unfavoured option. Similar with what have been going on the Waste Bank in Bandung, that statement correspondence with the huge cost that comes with it and along the quantity. But why can’t we be like japan? They have been doing the prevention on waste since 8th century by doing massive cleanup for the environment. The prevention is the most favored option, yet the smallest effort and cost required. The japanese culture rapidly increasing, until they have the system and policy for individual trash management now. Because trash should be our own responsibility, and to understand how and where it should belong. Therefore, is it easy to change the culture and way of thinking to over 250 millions of Indonesian people? Is it enough to just create an addition for the education program? Is campaign or private organization have been working out lately?

To create new evolution of culture, especially for the bigger scale, is another huge challenge we have to face. The diversity of economic condition, current culture, and believes, make it even harder. This is the reason why this is the chance of the young generation, to not only surviving by create new companies and innovation. The challenge is to change in communication system by utilizing technology. A new rumors can be easily spreaded.

Moreover, this can be related to trends that includes young people participation such as dancing, and singing, like what we recently see now the “tik tok”. So why can’t we influence them about the waste management? We should make people realize how important it is to change our daily culture for the sake of nature. By the mean of communication system, it’s not only by doing the talking and reading stuff, but it includes actions, creative strategies, to involve many people, even big companies or government. And the impact of that is not only to help the trash picker, or trash processing workers, it can also maintain the sustainability of environment. Researches of the energy, material, and even mechanical is still required here, but we should not forget to pay attention to communication system for the culture.