The landfill turns waste into energy not only for its own use but for the residents surrounding its area. Much work is needed in domestic waste management.
The sun was scorching hot over the sea of garbage covering the Manggar landfill in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.
The pensive 53-year-old Suyono could only watch excavators dig the pile of garbage and an incessant line of trucks unloading waste, as is feeding the excavators.
This dredging of waste is a daily sight at TPAS Manggar, which still uses sanitary landfills. In this place, waste will be stacked in a concave area or on concave land, then compacted.
Suyono’s home on Proklamasi Street in the Manggar urban ward is close by. Watching the scene, Yono, as he is often called, pondered how people could actually benefit from these piles of garbage.
The question remained a question for about a decade before the facility began to use the methane gas released by the piles of fuming garbage there.
The landfill’s management used leachate, the liquid secreted with methane from decomposing organic matter. Organic waste that is piled up and compacted in the area will decompose. In the process, liquid and methane gas will be released from the decomposing waste.
Although the scale was still small, methane was used as an alternative energy source. Three weeks of processing were needed before the gas could be used to meet the landfill’s internal energy needs.
“I once dreamed that residents could also profit from methane gas, so they do not need to buy gas,” Yono told CNNIndonesia.com on March 24, 2023.
In 2014, Yono began to seek ways how the gas could be used by residents, read many books to learn about the gas and how it could be processed
“I sometimes walk around the landfill to look at the existing potential. It turns out this methane gas could actually be channeled to local residents. I really believe that,” said Yono, who also heads a neighborhood unit, RT61.
After discussing it with local authorities, his constituents, and those from other neighborhoods, Yono finally decided to meet with Pertamina Hulu MAHAKAM (PHM), the operator of the offshore Hulu Mahakam oil and gas concession.
He asked PHM to assist in providing PVC pipes so that gas can be distributed to residents’ homes.
An inspection by PHM found that there was more than enough methane gas to meet the needs of the residents. The company then provided 300 pipes of various dimensions.
Some of the pipes were planted vertically into the piles of garbage while others were parallel to the ground to carry the gas into the homes.
No machinery was needed except a gas distributor and a separator that reduces water content in the gas.
“At the time, the methane gas flow was not like now, 24 hours, it was intermittent,” he said.
Working together with residents and the Balikpapan environment office, Yono continues to seek ways to expand the gas network reach.
The piping network continued to grow in the 2014-2018 period, expanding into the neighborhoods in surrounding areas.
“In neighborhoods 36 and 61, 41 houses can use methane gas to cook,” said Yono, adding that by 2019 the number of users had risen to 75 houses.
The Covid pandemic saw users grow to 305 families. These were houses from neighborhoods 95 and 97, still within a one-kilometer radius of the Manggar landfill entrance.
“Most residents here come from the middle and lower classes,” he said.
Over time, Yono hoped that the area that uses methane gas in Manggar urban ward would be named Kampung Gas Metana or Methane Gas Village. However, at PHM’s suggestion, Wasteco was chosen. An acronym for Waste to Energy for Communities.
Yono admitted that the name proposed by PHM, was more illustrative and appropriate.
“Residents around the Manggar landfill no longer depended on LPG since their homes are connected to the methane gas [pipeline],” Yono said.
Instead of buying the usual three-kilogram subsidized Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) canisters, residents just pay a monthly fee of Rp 10,000 per household to fund maintenance and purchase pipes for expansion.
“We also use the money to pay for a technician, Rp 600,000 a month. The rest is saved as a contingency fund,” he added.
Yono and his community’s achievements have drawn academic interests who, among others, question how he analyzed the amount of available gas in the landfill.
Yono said experience showed him that the highest amount of gas was in organic waste piles.
“Using methane gas is much easier because it is always available and better because the flames are also bigger,” he said.
Along with the development of gas pipe connections to residents’ homes, the Wasteco program also initiated the formation of MSMEs around the Manggar Landfill in 2018. Now, there are 22 home-based food processing businesses.
A mission to reduce emission
The Manggar landfill officially opened its doors two decades ago and covers 49 hectares of land owned by the Balikpapan administration.
The landfill, which is where the garbage of Balikapapan’s some 727,000 people ends, is about seven miles away from Jalan Mulawarman, the main road.
It has seven sanitary landfill areas, varying in size.
The largest ones are zone six and seven with 3.3 hectares each, followed by zone 2 with 3.0 hectares, zone 1 and 5 each with 2.6 hectares each, zone 4 with 1,5 hectares, and zone 3 with 0.6 hectares.
Zones One to Four are currently planted with vegetation and serve as a buffer area for the landfill. Zone five has just been filled and closed while zone six and seven still accept new garbage. Each zone would need four to five years to fill.
Data from the National Waste Management Information System (SIPSN) of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry showed that in the past four years, there was an increase of 56.11 tons in the amount of waste produced by the city.
From 458,62 tons of garbage in 2019, Balikpapan produced 514,73 tons in 2022 or 0.61 kilogram per person.
On the composition, 42.3 percent of the garbage was food waste, followed by paper and cardboard 10.26 percent, plastic 7.20 percent, glass 6.56 percent, wood and branches 3.87 percent, and others such as metal, cloth, rubber, and leather each under three percent. Non-recyclable waste accounted for 19.53 percent.
I sometimes walk around the landfill to look at the existing potential. It turns out this methane gas could actually be channeled to local residents. I really believe that.
Suyono
The waste that is sent to Manggar is not sorted. However, only organic waste can produce methane gas, namely food waste, leaves, wood branches, and paper.
“Everything is mixed,” the Head of the Manggar landfill, Muhammad Haryanto, said.
He said that making use of methane gas from the landfill as an alternative energy source is indeed encouraged by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
Methane (CH4) is one of the causes of global warming and contributes to ozone layer destruction. Its potential to trap heat on Earth is 25 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2).
Thus, using methane as cooking gas can reduce its volume in space and minimize the greenhouse gas effect.
The leachate from the landfill is also not thrown away but channelled into a treatment facility where it is processed and used to generate electricity to light a number of areas at the landfill.
The liquid waste from the processing of the leachate was also environmentally friendly, he said, adding that” everything can be used, both the leachate and the methane.”
Besides facilitating small and medium-scale enterprises and developing alternative energy, the Manggar landfill also processes solid waste to be used as fuel for power plants, replacing coal.
The use of solid waste as fuel is a pilot project, the first of its kind outside of Java. The project is being conducted in cooperation with the state utility company PLN and the Balikpapan environment office, managed by the Manggar landfill management.
“We can process 20 to 50 tons of waste and in a day produce up to hundreds of kilograms of pellets and wood chips. These two are then mixed with coal as an energy source for the steam-powered power plant,” Haryanto said.
Recognised and awarded
The Head of the Balikpapan environment office, Sudirman Djayaleksana explained that what Manggar has achieved was not accomplished in a short time. Instead, it needed years.
“In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it is one of the best waste management methods,” said Djayaleksana.
The landfill can even become a destination for recreation and education for local people to learn good waste management.
The facility is also equipped to support 3R activities – reduce, reuse, and recycle, and produces up to five tons of compost a day. “There is also a plastic recycling facility in Manggar, turning them into handicrafts,” Djayaleksana said.
In 2019, President Jokowi recognised the Manggar landfill and its project as the best sanitary landfill. Through the Ministry of Public Works, he awarded Rp160 billion for the development of its zone 5, 6 and 7.
This achievement also contributed to Balikpapan receiving the 2022 Adipura Kencana, an award for environmental efforts, and also winning the 2021 ASEAN Environmentally Sustainable City (ESC) Award.
“But we still have much to do, especially with regard to upstream waste management. So far, residents are not separating organic and inorganic waste. They should be separated,” he said.
An outdated system
At the end of February 2005, 157 people were killed by a landslide at the Leuwigajah landfill in Cimahi, West Java. Two villages were erased from the map due to the mountains of garbage that collapsed.
The tragedy led to the issuance of Law Number 18 of 2008 on waste management. This law stipulates an end to open garbage dumps. However, more than a decade later, many municipalities and districts across Indonesia still dump their garbage in an open landfills.
“The open dump system is prone to landslides. There are even those who burn their garbage even though the law prohibits it due to its toxicity and pollution it causes,” said Dwi Sawung, a campaign manager for urban and energy for the Indonesia Forum for Environment (WALHI).
Article 44 of Law number 18 of 2008 requires regional governments to no longer use open dumps for garbage within five years, since this law was ratified.
But in East Kalimantan, the system is still widely used. Sawung expressed hope that other municipalities and districts in the province could follow the steps taken by Balikpapan.
“Sanitary landfills are what is mostly encouraged. The gas can be utilized and the leachate processed. There are not many landfills like this in Indonesia,” he said.
