A YARN YOU MIGHT WANT TO RUBBISH

BTW: Keep on trashing - jobs depend on it

Before you screech for the editor’s phone number demanding he shred this story and its delinquent author, please read me out.

  

Leaders around the globe regularly express outrage at the megatonnes of plastic clogging waterways, polluting beaches and despoiling the environment.

No doubt reformers mean what they say, though one recent plea for firearm controls resonates: 

When a deranged gunman shot staff at the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland there was the standard gush of politicians’ sympathy - till an enraged journalist replied:  ‘We don’t want your prayers and thoughts - we want your action!’

Even if all the official statements on fixing the plastic problem meant ten less truckloads of trash had been reused or burnt (in an emission-free power-station), we’d still have a pile deeper than Merdeka Square and higher than Monas.

Wow! Let’s throw in the towel (for recycling); this is mission beyond impossible, like getting kids to stop texting.  The legend of King Canute offers a moving example of the stupidity of confronting forces bigger than ourselves .  

The 11th century ruler of the North Sea Kingdoms, seemingly reincarnated in Washington, is said to have ordered the incoming tide to halt.

This is an early example of fake news, as academics say the tale is a load of old rubbish - but, like the White House press corps, historians aren’t to be trusted.  What we can report for certain is that the beach wasn’t piled with plastic.  Had that been the case the tide might have responded to the regal edict.

My duty to personal health includes circumnavigating our suburb. Every dawn I encounter men in yellow uniforms stenciled Petugas Kebersihan, (janitors), one for every kilometer plodded.

This army of street sweepers soldiers on, seven-days a week, and still loses the battle.  Before they knock off, the sidewalks they cleaned are already splattered with garbage tossed by the uncaring.  

The workers’ lives are like Sisyphus, eternally doomed to push a rock uphill which then rolls down - but at least it’s a job.

Now imagine if the polluters reformed and took their trash home.  Then there’s be no work for the PK crew and their low-tech gear.  

They use long-handled brushwood brooms, the type common in Canute’s century and handy as pre-Airbus transport for witches.  The best besoms come from kampong crafters; no doctorate is needed to deduce that when demand drops, jobs tumble.

The Central Statistics Agency reckons more than seven million are unemployed, and many more under-employed. 

So it would be irresponsible to increase that number by chucking road gangs on the economy’s scrap heap - the logical outcome should we stop littering the highways and creeks.

The other victims would be pemulung, the men and women who rise earlier than the PK to scavenge anything salable. If we reused rubbish ourselves they’d also be elbowed aside by progress.

Let’s throw down the gauntlet (and pick it up again). Ignore the naysayers and run a national campaign to change behavior.  There’s a line in the national anthem about ‘our beloved country’.  Time to love, not just sing.

Mission impossible?  Not so. Second President Soeharto’s prolonged and intensive Keluarga Berencana family planning program pulled the brake on runaway population growth.

That was in an autocracy. With a democracy  electors can chose to ignore urgings  unenforced by laws. Absent is the political will.

The default position is to do nothing. Eventually nature will adapt.  A new organism will evolve, as we did, from the primeval slime, and devour the discards. 

The process is already underway. It’s no longer possible to see plastic floating on Tondano, the largest lake in North Sulawesi.

That’s because it’s smothered by a green carpet of eceng gondok, the water hyacinth that spreads faster than rumors in an election year. 

OK, it’s still pollution and killing fish; but at least it’s natural. \\

First published in The Jakarta Post Saturday 22 September

HOT BEMOS FOR JAKARTA

Enrico Halim

Take a ride on the wild side        

                                  

If you’re around Jakarta’s Jalan Sudirman next month (June), fed up with air-conditioned luxury cabs and feeling adventurous, keep an eye open for a pink bemo.

Or maybe magenta.  The color is still being debated, but it’s likely to be standout shrill.

Either way the driver will be Pak Kinong so you’ll be in good hands.  He knows the back streets like his steering wheel because he’s been driving the noisy, smelly three-wheel rattletraps since 1970.

Except that this time he’ll be at the controls of a clean and quiet spruced-up electric machine – the Bio Bemo.

So if you’re ready to chance a ride you’ll be helping take down the capital’s appalling pollution by a few grams of carbon monoxide, which has to be all good.

So where’s the risk?  Although the bemo has been mechanically checked it shouldn’t be on the road.  

Law-conscious Westerners shy at riding unlicensed transport because it might void insurance policies, but that doesn’t seem to bother too many Indonesians, including Enrico Halim, the man behind the Bio Bemo

“We want the machine registered but transport laws don’t say anything about electric bemos,” he said.  “So the bureaucrats have told us to go away and find a solution workable to them.

“Most technical issues have been fixed – it’s the paperwork blocking us from going forward.  We’ve spoken to Jokowi (Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo) who said the idea is ‘very interesting’.” A low wattage response, but Team Bio Bemo sees a spark of support.

Enrico, 44, doesn’t fit the image of grease-stained mechanical inventor.  Originally from Bandung he’s a graphic artist trained in the US who teaches part-time at Tarumanegara University.   He set up an agency called Aikon, ‘an institution for the open minded pursuing the better Indonesia’.

A petrolhead he is not.  He rides a (non-electric) motorbike and is more interested in making his city safe and sweet than being seen at the wheel of a black saloon from Stuttgart.

Which is why he’s pushing to convert old bemos to electric power locally rather than import glitzy modern machines – a solution favored by the big transport operators.

Bemos may have been sidelined but there are still about 500 operating from eight stations in Jakarta. “They are part of our heritage, first imported from Japan during the Soekarno era,” Enrico said. “Sadly our education doesn’t teach us to respect history.

“Bemo are efficient, able to negotiate narrow and crowded streets, to go on roads inaccessible to other vehicles. They are particularly good shifting produce to and from traditional markets.”

The two stroke engines are noisy, thirsty and dirty.  So Enrico and his mates have built a pick-up using four standard batteries and a Chinese 48-volt brushless electric motor.

The orange prototype has been on the roads for almost three months.  The next model, out soon, will carry passengers.

The gas engine and transmission have been removed, so the clunky gear system has also been eliminated, giving passengers a smoother ride.

It’s claimed the maximum distance is 75 kilometers on a full charge, though best to park after 50 to avoid battery damage.  This is within the range of many routes, though not all. An overnight battery top up using a standard household cable should cost a few thousand rupiah.

Enrico isn’t all torque - he’s also into social engineering.  “I want to put the Bio Bemo within the reach of owner–drivers,” he said. “At the moment they earn about Rp 150,000 (US$15) a day but more than half of that goes on gas and oil. 

“We’ve been talking to banks and should be able to negotiate a Rp 30 million (US$3,000) loan for conversions, repaid over 30 months with the money saved.

“Half the drivers who have seen the Bio Bemo are enthusiastic.  The others are worried about range and recharging time.  We’re considering is a battery exchange program.”

Jaywalkers won’t be able to hear or smell the Bio Bemos so a “fun sound” from little drums on the Bio Bemo’s wheels may be added to alert the unwary.

Enrico has long been keen on alternative energy and for a while experimented with hydrogen power. His interest switched to electricity when visiting his daughter Kintaka who is studying in New Zealand.  In Wellington he saw local government staff driving electric-powered cars to promote the capital’s clean and green credentials.

Using the Internet (“my mechanic is Pak Google”) he plugged into an international ring of incandescent electric vehicle enthusiasts.  They included pioneers of the Philippines’ distinctive E-Jeepneys, the flamboyantly decorated electric mini-busses now becoming popular in Manila.  Three experts came to Jakarta and gave advice.

Overseas aid agencies have signalled interest in the Bio Bemo (Greenpeace backed the E-Jeepney project).  However Enrico is wary of getting too much support that could over-engineer the bemos, ramp costs and make the vehicles too dear for drivers.

For example, lithium batteries and fast chargers would triple the conversion cost.

“Our Filipino friends couldn’t imagine why our government isn’t supporting the project,” Enrico said. “They also noted that electricity in Jakarta is about half the cost of power in Manila.

“I hoped we might interest local universities, but there’s been no enthusiasm.  It seems the Bio Bemo isn’t sexy or modern enough.  Of course we’re using really old technology and looking for long-term solutions.

“Everyone seems to be depending on Jokowi and Ahok  (deputy governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama) to have all the ideas and do everything.

“They are just two men.  We should solve problems ourselves.  The main point is this:  Why doesn’t the government see this as a practical solution to some of Jakarta’s transport problems?”

Maybe it will after the Bio Bemo team heads to City Hall on 22 June in an all-out bid to turn on the public servants’ interest and maybe even get them to authorize registration.

In that case foreigners might be more willing to try a trip.

(First published in The Jakarta Post, 3 June 2013)

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ECENG GONDOK - LAKE KILLER

Minahasa’s green assassin Duncan Graham
Eceng gondok is the Houdini of the weed world.

If it could talk, like the revolutionaries of 1945 it would be forever shouting Merdeka! (Freedom). In North Sulawesi it’s happy beyond measure – particularly in Lake Tondano.

From the Lambean Mountains, studded with tall clove trees in fire-red finery, the 14 kilometer long lake looks tourist-brochure perfect.

Smoke from smouldering rice straw drifts slowly across still waters, shimmering in the sunlight, blue-gray as the heavens. A lone fisher in a flat-bottom canoe carved from hinterland timber rhythmically hauls in his net, hand over hand. His grandfather showed him how and his grandfather learned the same way.

Closer and the scene changes. No water laps the foreshore boulders. They’ve disappeared under a carpet of lush wide-leaf plants so thick maybe a child could run across to the lake, hundreds of meters away.

The village kids know better, so use bamboo walkways. Eceng gondok (water hyacinth), one of the world’s worst waterway pests, is dense but gives no support. And if it’s not controlled soon the lake will no longer support the 300,000 people who depend on it being fresh, full and hearty for their living.

“Lake Tondano has many functions and it’s the responsibility of everyone to provide care,” said engineer Jefry Karlos, boss of water quality in Minahasa Regency.

“Unfortunately many communities won’t cooperate because they think the health of the lake isn’t their responsibility. The Regent is very disappointed,

“The lake water creates electricity from two hydro stations. (The lake is 600 meters above sea level.) We reticulate the water to the towns and villages.

“The flatland paddy that surround the lake provides rice. Millions of fish are farmed in netted ponds in the lake. There’s huge tourism potential but this hasn’t been realised.

“In 1935 the lake was 40 meters deep. Now it’s only 15.”

Lake Tondano, just above the equator, is the center of a resource-rich rural region with landscapes that define rugged beauty. Unlike Java there are few people and a lot of wilderness, some of it little touched. Agriculture is the biggest income earner. This is an area where political candidates promote themselves wearing cowboy hats and on horseback.

Despite its critical economic and lifestyle importance the 4,600 hectare lake, formed by a huge volcanic explosion millions of years ago, has for too long been used as a sewer and garbage pit. Unexploded munitions from the Japanese occupation in the 1940s are believed to lie under a concrete jetty once used by flying boats.

Lavatories and drains empty straight into the lake. Women scrub clothes on the shoreline then toss dirty, phosphate-rich suds into the water. Fertilisers run-off from the surrounding 20,000 hectares of rice fields and market gardens, lifting nitrogen levels.

These effects are invisible. The water hyacinth is not. The weed creates a mosquito paradise. Apart from being an eyesore it starves the water of oxygen and kills fish.

Karlos said his office hadn’t heard of marine life dying, but Irwan Hartonio who has 34 ponds each with 2,000 fish near the village of Kakas has different tales. He also remembers when the water lapped halfway up the stone foundations of his home.

Now it’s far away, under the thick green smothering sward with its deceptive pretty pink flowers. The lower water levels are blamed for regular daily power cuts. Low rainfall has also been a factor. Many businesses and homes have standby generators.

“In 2008 we had a budget of Rp 1 billion (US $ 100,000) to get rid of the weed,” said Karlos. “We can’t spray because it will kill the fish. So every Friday for six or seven months government workers pulled heavy clumps of water hyacinth to shore where it rotted in piles.

“Then the money was finished.” But the free-floating vengeful weed was not, and like a Biblical plague it’s returning in force, seven times seven.

To try and convince the villagers that the lake had to be saved the government put up a huge sign explaining the need for action and distributed pamphlets.

Could The Jakarta Post see these? Sorry, said Karlos, the sign has gone and there have been no reprints. So what are the plans? Hopes that an investor will arrive and build a biogas plant to generate methane. Or maybe a factory to turn the weed into cattle feed or fertiliser.

Have such white knights galloped in to save damsel Tondano in distress, their saddlebags stuffed with greenbacks? Well, not yet, and it seems none are on the horizon.

A proven use for water hyacinth is furniture manufacture. The weed is pulled and sun-dried. The strong brown stalks are plaited to form ropes. These are then woven around wicker and wood frames to make tables, chairs and sofas.

These are particularly attractive to overseas buyers concerned about conservation. Here’s a sustainable product, which improves the environment when it’s harvested.

A small cooperative called Kerajinan Eceng Gondok (water hyacinth handicrafts) at the lakeside village of Watumea employs up to 30 to make the furniture – but only after orders have been received. The government has given some training, but the community says it has no money for marketing, so its products are little known and work intermittent.

“We can’t borrow money from the banks because the government won’t help with a guarantee,” said Sintje Supit, the co-op coordinator. “Without capital we can’t pay the workers.” Her complaint is familiar among small businesses across the Republic.

And still the water hyacinth multiplies, like a horror movie featuring alien slime. When one area is cleared the wind whips across the water bringing mother clumps from afar, moving like bilious squid, eager to colonise empty shores with their fecund daughters.

“We’ve controlled waste from restaurants and hotels getting into the lake,” said Karlos, counting one victory in one minor skirmish in a major war. His agency doesn’t employ anyone to monitor water quality.

“I don’t know how it got here and when it started. Ten years ago. Maybe more. (One report suggested the mid 90s.)

“We’re motivated to save the lake, even though we don’t have any money. The important thing is to get rid of the weed and bring the benefits to the people.

“How can we look after our lake? This is a very serious problem but many communities just want the government to do the job. Yet we lack the funds.”

Eceng gondok lacks neither the resources nor the will. Here’s a tip: If you’ve ever planned to visit this lovely lake, don’t hesitate. It may not be here in the future. .

(Sidebar)

Going feral

Water hyacinth can look lovely in a garden pond surrounded by concrete frogs. But once it escapes into the wild it goes wild. The seeds are tough as cockroaches and can survive for 30 years.

Originally from tropical South America, sales of Eichhornia crassipes from garden shops are now banned in many Western countries.

The weed got into Florida in the 19th century but is now reported to be under control. In Africa is has done huge damage to Lake Victoria. Tondano isn’t the only Sulawesi victim. There are reports of rivers getting blocked near Makassar.

Despite its reputation for blanketing waterways and clogging power station turbine blades, the weed gets a good press with its ability to absorb heavy metals. So it can be used to clean up rivers polluted by factory discharges.

Though only if guarded 24 / 7.

(First published in The Jakarta Post 7 December 2009)

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