The collaboration of three departments in Universitas Sebelas Maret Surakarta (UNS) held the workshop entitled Integrated Waste Management and Pollution Control: Sharing Best Practices from the United States on Thursday (6/2/2016). Those three departments were Geography Education and Chemical Engineering from Undergraduate Program and Environmental Science from Postgraduate program.
The speaker of the workshop which took place in Faculty of Culture Science was Richard Gertman coming from United States Embassy. He is also the Environmental Planning Consultant in United States. Richard explained how to get to zero waste starting from the ways to minimize waste disposed. They are adopted from what United States has been doing so far to accomplish the zero waste. Richard began explaining the upstream and downstream ways which cover the whole processes of maintaining the waste. Richard emphasized on the importance of separating the waste based on its material classification, he stated that, “The waste must be separated based on its material. The people only have two choices, whether the waste is compostable or recycleable.”
In this workshop, Richard shared the integrated wasted management implemented in United States namely San Fransisco Mandatory Stream Collection, EOW Garbage, Portola Valley, Sunnyvale, Split Cart, and so forth. Those programs aim to reduce the material contamination. According to Richard, people tend to mix the waste altogether, however, it will undoubtedly causes the contamined material which harm the human due to its chemical substance contained in the waste. Besides, he also explained why we should not use plastic bag for the ink contains the heavy metal which is very dangerous for the environment. Dealing with zero waste energy, he added that the food scraps from the restaurants can be processed to be the animal feed after being mashed, dehydrated, and sterilized using screw press machine which can reduce weight by a minimum of 35%. Therefore, processing the wastes to be harmless and beneficial needs total system facilities and precise control conducted by the government and the people who have the responsibility for this waste problem.
In the end of the session, Richard suggested the developing countries to start the better waste management, “The integrated waste management and pollution can be accomplished by changing the system. The developing countries can do that if they want to start the long-term solution by teaching the kids what they have to do with the waste. It takes time but it has lots of benefits.” [denty.red.uns.ac.id]