Jakarta – Prof. Emeritus Paul Connett, an activist and expert on chemical environment and toxicology expresses that building incinerators in twelve (12) regencies in Indonesia to handle waste is a very bad idea. On Saturday (07/13/2019).
“Why is this a very bad idea?” Because wastes in Indonesia is mixed and so many. The fact is 60% of wastes in Indonesia is organic and it’s mixed with non-organic wastes. Therefore, we won’t get an efficient economic value from it, even with the idea that this generates electricity. The fact is the net energy production is small,” said Prof. Emeritus Paul Connett.
Prof. Paul Connett also explained that the plan to build incinerators is very costly and is a wrong solution to handle waste. Three fund sources for incinerators come from tipping fees, public tax which will eventually be used as expenses to burn every waste there is, starting from the capital cost, operating cost, and profit margin.
Government’s solution shouldn’t be high-temperature energy solution, but a low-temperature energy solution which is anaerobic digestion from organic waste management. Composing is a good way for an efficient upstream waste handling.
As an expert on chemical environment and toxicology, Prof. Paul explained blatantly why incinerators must be rejected. He detailed the risks of incinerators implementations which cause several negative impacts such as energy loss, health impacts, economic impacts, and etc. Especially for health impacts, his research, which has been referred by many parties, proves that a cow can inhale dioxin (incinerator’s byproduct) much more than humans. A one-day dioxin inhalation by a cow is equal to 14 years dioxin inhalation by humans.
He further explained, the next problem is human’s consumption of meat and milk from those cows. One litre cow milk contains dioxin equals to 8 months dioxin inhalation by humans. Dioxin attaches itself to fat tissue in the human body and then accumulates.
Prof. Paul’s research shows that women are able to release dioxin from its body by giving birth, however the dioxin will have been exposed to the baby, and in men, dioxin can never be released.
As an information, Prof. Paul came to Indonesia as part of his world tour titled Zero Waste Campaign Tour 2019. This was his second visit to Indonesia, the first one was in 2016 when he attended in-kind activities in multiple cities, starting from Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, and Denpasar. (Dona).
