In Japan, waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerators are integral to the country’s waste management system and a familiar part of the landscape. But in Jakarta, Indonesia, a proposed modern WTE facility remains a ghost project, having been stuck in a state of incompletion for years. Why?
This research illuminates the complexity of Jakarta's ambitious Sunter ITF: a state-of-the-art project that exists only on paper and was first supported by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. In doing so, it analyzes how multiple stakeholders perceive waste as a futuristic problem and the implications of employing predominantly technical solutions to solve it.
However, the research does not only center on the failings of the Sunter ITF. Rather, by turning to community-led projects in cities such as Bandung and Surakarta, it investigates how communities have challenged the conventional WTE top-down approach by contesting the idea of a singular, large-scale project and constructing their own infrastructure from the ground up. Their experience provides valuable lessons in attaining just and sustainable answers to the problems of waste and energy management.