Recycling Stations
"@MissLaiLai: I love seeing Recycling Stations, like the ones in JIS (saw during TEDxJakarta last week). Hey @TizaMafira any chance you know where else they have these in town? :D"
The Recycling station she was referring to looks like this:
Which reminds me a lot, I'm rather proud to say, of the ones at my almamater law school at University of Indonesia:
The name "Recycling Station" is a bit snazzy and elaborate, they really are just a row of rubbish bins. But there is a reason why it's called "recycling" and that is to enforce the idea that Every. Single. Piece of. Garbage. Can be. Recycled.
Every single piece of garbage can be recycled. But. Ah there's a but! Of course there's a but.
BUT only if the garbage in question manages to find its way into the right hands. Hence the compartment separation, because mixed-up garbage is a pain to sort and will eventually probably not get sorted and sent to the right recyclers. Of course the complexity of the rubbish supply chain from user to scavenger to dump site to recyclers is another matter which merits another blog post.
To answer MissLaiLai's question, we have these kinds of rubbish bins all over town and you must have seen them before:
BUT only if the garbage in question manages to find its way into the right hands. Hence the compartment separation, because mixed-up garbage is a pain to sort and will eventually probably not get sorted and sent to the right recyclers. Of course the complexity of the rubbish supply chain from user to scavenger to dump site to recyclers is another matter which merits another blog post.
To answer MissLaiLai's question, we have these kinds of rubbish bins all over town and you must have seen them before:
I found the above picture from Pandji's blog and the problem, as he puts it, is in the design. I completely agree. If not entirely compelling and decorated with taglines that call out to your conscience and morality, at the very least be informative. Having one blue and one orange is an interesting study in color-mixing but does nothing to tell you where to put your empty can.
Granted, the above bins are anomalous. Maybe the procurement dudes happened to pick a vendor that wasn't big on labels (like me... I'm really not into relationship labels these days, um, but anyways.) Tons of other similar rubbish bins have these labels: "Wet" and "Dry", or "Organic" and "Non-Organic".
A recurring complaint from friends is that these labels are also not helpful.
"I'm throwing away this bread. I'm pretty sure it's not organic since it didn't grow out of soil."
"So my wet tissue goes into 'WET', right?"
(In case you were wondering, the response to both the above quotes is "Wrong")
JIS labels theirs with a (i) Metal, glass, & plastics, (ii) Organic, and (iii) General. Other bins I've seen are categorized (i) Plastic, (ii) Paper, (iii) Organic. Sometimes "Glass" is in there somewhere. Sometimes "Metal" also, which messes with everyone's head when you need to throw away a piece of paper with staples on it. Or a tin of sardines with a paper label on it.
So, not only is the problem in the design, but also on the uniformity of the design. Separating garbage is counter-intuitive sometimes: why take the chicken bones out of the KFC box if I can just chuck the whole damn box with the bones in it?
If there was a uniformity and consistency in the way bins and labels are designed and we're constantly being fed with this simple information like a relentless propaganda drumming into our thick heads, I think most of us would finally get the point. Uniformity requires policy.
When talking policy I can head all sorts of directions. For the time being let me just really really answer MissLaiLai's question and then get back to my day job:
Answer: "You can find recycling stations in your house and mine."
Because it's pretty easy to start one at home :-)
PS: Give the contents of your "paper" bin to Pak Salam at Kedai Daur Ulang, Mampang Prapatan.
*first two photos from SunhYoung's blog and Nisaa's blog.
terima kasih atas informasinya
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