Ramboll will be assisting the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA) and the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) in rolling out the Sustainable Islands Initiative (SII), a solid waste management project based in Indonesia, the consultancy announced in a press release published on 12 June 2019. The project is the result of a cooperation between the Indonesian environment ministry, DEA and DEPA.
The initiative aims to tackle Indonesia’s growing waste problem. The island nation is currently generating 85,000 tonnes of waste daily, a number that is expected to increase to 150,000 tonnes by 2025. Furthermore, many of the country’s 17,000 islands are running on outdated infrastructure, which includes waste management systems.Ramboll has already completed an assignment as part of SII; namely, it has defined the parameters that should be used to select islands where the project is most likely to succeed.
The main challenge for SII will be logistical, as opposed to technological, in nature, Reno Munksgaard, project manager at Ramboll, opined. “The big challenge is to set up a system that effectively collects and handles the waste and is sustainable in the long term,” he said.He added that the focus for the project will be to ensure that the islands will be able to attract investment in waste management infrastructure in the future. In order for that to happen, SII will explore ways to increase the selling price of green energy and the gate fees for the handling of waste.