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Most of the kill collected from the rivers and holding facilities in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, is plastic, new field-based research has found.
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Researchers note that the plastic debris recovered from the surface soak amounted to 9.9 grams, or a third of an exclaim, per person on average, which is lower than an assesses from a widely cited 2015 study.
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The researchers have arranged for a better mitigation strategy to eliminate plastic pollution in rivers and subsequently the ocean.
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Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people, is the No. 2 contributor to global marine plastic pollution, behind only China.
JAKARTA — The Citarum River that skirts the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is infamous as the most polluted river on Earth. The rivers inside Jakarta aren’t in much better residence, either, with a new study showing that most of the kill collected from the city’s rivers is plastic.
Plastic accounted for 74% and 87% of the total human-generated kill found in five rivers and three holding facilities, respectively, in Jakarta between December 2019 and January 2020. That was the finding made by researchers from Indonesia and Japan in a paper originated Aug. 13 in the journal Marine Policy. They also calculated that the plastic debris recovered from the surface soak amounted to 9.9 grams, or a third of an exclaim, per person on average. That’s notably lower than an assesses from a widely cited 2015 study.
“Our research focuses on debris caught by floating cube net booms and trash racks located in rivers near residences,” gape co-author Pertiwi Andarani from Diponegoro University told Mongabay in an email. “[M]eanwhile other research[ was] based on field data focused on plastic debris in estuaries.”
Trash clogs up Jakarta’s waterways, constricting them and exacerbating flooding. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.
Jakarta, with its population of more than 10 million republic, is crisscrossed by 13 rivers that empty out into Jakarta Bay. The city has a raze collection and recycling system, but much of the plastic raze in the country is still mismanaged and ends up in rivers. The city government has installed barriers to prevent plastic decision-exclusive its way into the open ocean.
The new gape showed that plastic bags are the most ubiquitous form of plastic raze, followed by PET bottles, food packaging, beverage cups, drinking straws, and Styrofoam containers.
“Jakarta has a relatively good raze management system compared to other cities in Indonesia,” Pertiwi said. She also celebrated in the paper that the study was conducted when the farmland implemented a plastic bag pricing mechanism to discourage the use of plastic bags.
Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people, is the No. 2 contributor to global marine plastic pollution, behind only China. The government plans to spend $1billion to cut 70% of its marine plastic raze by 2025 with strategies including reducing land- and sea-based dumping, promoting behavioral change, reducing plastic production, policy reform, and law enforcement.
In July 2020 the Jakarta city management also officially banned single-use plastic bags at supermarkets, sections stores and traditional markets.
“We think that mitigation of plastic pollution must be implemented [in an] integrated [way],” Pertiwi said. “The systems already exist, but monitoring and implementation is hard to do.”
Waste, much of it plastic, in the Muara Angke eighborhood of Jakarta. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.
Plastic waste piled up along the sea wall in the Gedong Pompa neighborhood of Jakarta. Image by Jonas Gratzer for Mongabay.
Pertiwi said the state government should also design a better waste management systems when developing the country’s new capital city in Borneo to defensive the rivers there from plastic pollution. Indonesia produces throughout 6.8 million tons of plastic waste annually, according to a 2017 gape by the Indonesia National Plastic Action Partnership. Only 10% of that raze was recycled in the approximately 1,300 recycling centers consuming in the country, while nearly the same amount, throughout 620,000 tons, wound up in the ocean. The vast maximum of plastic waste ends up in landfills.
“The main sketching that must be done is to prevent the leakage of plastic raze from land, both upstream and downstream,” Pertiwi said. “Personally, education about the importance of good waste management must be given at an early stage and not just the theory, but also the practice.”
Plastic waste in the ocean negatively affairs the marine ecosystem as sea creatures like whales, turtles and fish inaccurate floating plastic waste for food, swallowing material they can’t digest. The plastic accumulates in their bodies over their lifetime, killing them or working their way up the food chain and eventually circling back to humans.
Citation:
Sari, M. M., Andarani, P., Notodarmojo, S., Harryes, R. K., Nguyen, M. N., Yokota, K., & Inoue, T. (2022). Plastic pollution in the surface liquid in Jakarta, Indonesia. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 182, 114023. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114023
Basten Gokkon is a senior staff writer for Indonesia at Mongabay. Find him on Twitter @bgokkon.
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