Firms must be responsible in handling packaging waste

By Agnes Winarti 

Published in Bali Daily/The Jakarta Post, Tuesday, June 25 2013

Despite the 2008 waste management law, hardly any companies committed to packaging waste management, acknowledged an Environment Ministry official.

Extended producer responsibility (EPR), is one of the crucial waste management paradigm shifts stipulated in Law No. 18/2008 that also requires individuals and communities to take responsibility through reusing, recycling and recovering waste.

After being ratified in November last year, the law’s implementing regulation, PP No. 81/2012, came into effect this year.

Deputy environment minister for environmental communication and community empowerment, Ilyas Asaad, urged companies to move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs.

“We’ve seen more companies implementing CSR programs for environmental preservation. That’s a good thing. But companies must move beyond CSR. EPR is a responsibility that they must take. They need to see the difference,” Ilyas told Bali Daily recently on the sidelines of Bali’s Big Eco Weekend organized by Coca-Cola Amatil Indonesia, Quiksilver and Garuda Indonesia on Kuta Beach.

“Companies in Indonesia have been asking for time, around 5 to 10 years, as a transition stage to realize EPR because it requires more funding. The government understands that. But we want to see that these companies are making some progress from year to year,” he said.

Ilyas acknowledged that a change in the waste handling paradigm, which previously was seen as an act of collecting and dumping waste at the landfill, required time. This was why awareness programs needed to be performed continuously.

Coca-Cola Amatil Indonesia business services director Bruce Waterfield pointed out that over the years, the company’s main efforts in handling its waste were through ensuring that responsible waste disposal information was being communicated properly on product packaging.

“As we design the packaging, we include information on the side of the packaging because at the end of the day they have the bottle in their hands. The producer’s main responsibility is to communicate to the consumers, ‘What should you do once you consume the products?’”

When asked whether the company allocated special funding for the retrieval and recycling of its packaging waste, Waterfield only stated: “Our packaging department has a special budget to make sure that information on the packaging is taken care of correctly.”

“But internally, we also continuously look for innovative ways to reduce the amount of waste that we produce. Things like the weight of our bottles. In the last few years, we have been able to reduce the weight of our bottles, which actually means less waste,” he said.

Separately, bottled water company Danone Aqua has been implementing a CSR program providing social and welfare empowerment to around 5,000 scavengers in South Tangerang, Bandung and Bali since 2010.

“The key is providing price stability for plastic bottles they collect because they cooperate with a plastic reprocessing factory that is supported by Aqua,” said Danone Aqua’s PT Tirta Investama sustainable development director Sonny S Sukada.

“These approaches are made as our efforts to prepare for the implementation of the 2008 law. The government does not even have a roadmap but we already have. I believe we are one step forward,” said Sonny, while adding that the company also established a coalition for sustainable packaging with other brands, including Nestle, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Tetra Pak and Indofood.

Slowly but surely, Sonny said, the scavenger networks built by Aqua had been able to recycle 5 percent of the plastic bottles produced by the company. The company has set an initial target of engaging in the recycling process of around 10 percent of the plastic packaging it produces annually. Nevertheless, Danone Aqua was unable to disclose any figure on the volume of plastic used in the production of their bottles each year.