LET’S MAKE FRIENDS WITH GARBAGE

Senin

Oleh Saut P Silalahi, Green KDP

The perspective that garbage is disgusting, ruins the beauty of a city, and endangers health ensures the community keeps its distance from garbage and doesn’t manage it wisely. Without realizing, the inclination to not care about garbage actually makes the garbage piles even bigger. However, garbage management has its benefits, not only from a cleanliness perspective but can add to the family income.

Understanding gerbage
Before processing garbage, we must get to know garbage. Garbage consists of organic garbage, often known as wet garbage, and non-organic garbage, or dry rubbish. Wet garbage comes from living things, such as vegetable matter from cooking. This type of garbage can degrade naturally and therefore can be processed to become compost. The compost produced can take the form of a solid or liquid.
Dry garbage, such as plastic, cans, and glass, can’t degrade naturally in order to be re-used, special technology is needed. Practically, we can re-sell dry garbage to businesses that specialize in non- organic waste such as paper plastic and glass.

Processing garbage to becom compost
A simple intervention that can be implemented to manage garbage is creating compost. Garbage processing technology is being developed that involves microbes that breakdown garbage (activator). Using an activator , the process of decay that usually takes 6 months can be completed in just 3 weeks.
Creating compost is not difficult and can be done at home. All you need is two rubbish bins of different colors to separate organic and non organic waste and a plastic drum as a container for the compost.
To begin witth, create a small hole in the container to drain the liquid produced during the process. To guard against damp, cover the top of the container with a bamboo lid or a gunny sack. The container should be placed on the earth or a paving block so the excess water can drain. It’s important that the container doesn’t get rained on. Another way is to use a composter, in which garbage is placed in the plastic composter which has a tap at the bottom to drain the liquid compost.
The tools you need to create compost are: a shovel, a trowel, a bucket, a drum, a knife, plastic to cover the container, and a thermometer. When the container and tools are ready, the steps to make compost are as follows:
- Gather the household organic refuse (food leftovers, vegetable scraps, fruit peels, fish and meat cuttings). Ideally, the scraps should be cut into small pieces.
- Place them in a container, mix in the bio-activator and stir through. The bio-activator is microbes that specifically work to accelerate the process of decay. Bioactivator can be bought in stores that supply agricultural equipment.
- Place the mixture in the composter with the tap or holes.
- If the container is not yet full, add more garbage and spray with the bioactivator. Every time you add new organic material re-spray with bioactivator. When the containeris full close the lid tightly.
- Leave it for 7-14 days to ensure the process continues.
- After letting it rest, take the compost out of the container to dry in the sun and air. Once it is dry, the compost can be used or packaged for sale.
- The liquid compost can be collected through the tap or hole. The liquid can be used as liquid organic fertilizer by adding 1/3 liter of bioactivator to every 1 liter of water and then sealing the container for seven days. After that period, the organic fertilizer can be used by mixing I literof the liquid with 40 liters of water.

The key to successfully creating compost is found in how we control the temperature, damp and air, so that the microbes can thrive in an optimal environmental.
On a larger scale, compost production can become a collective small-medium enterprise. For example, in a residential area, the initiative can be managed by the neighborhood head or a specific body. It would be compulsory for all households to separate their garbage. Therefore, garbage will no longer pile up in landfills, which have the potential to cause pollution, illness, or wateiway blocking.

For more Information please contact Saut P. Silalahi sauts@bakti org atau kirim surat ke Green KDP, ,Jl Dr Sutomo 26, Makassar, Sulawesi Selatan.