Trash Culture

KOMPAS/M CLARA WRESTI

The 4.0 revolution in new ports revolves around changing the way things work, from what used to be paper, now everything is digital.

Of all life on earth, human beings are the only creatures who are able to form culture and produce various waste along with the formation of new cultures.

From the era of the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution, the problem of waste has not subsided in the agenda of policy makers and environmental activists in a number of countries. They are looking for solutions for increases in the amount of waste and its impact on the environment.

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For a long time the emphasis has been more on the impact and less on the root causes of the waste culture. A simple example is when the government tries to overcome the flow of rivers that have turned into waste and garbage flows in a number of areas. Various methods are carried out and technology is applied, but they only touch problems at the downstream stage, not at the root of the issue in the upstream. The real question is not just how to clean the rivers but also why do parts of our society (individuals, households and factories) continue to pollute rivers?

Cultural thinkers have long criticized consumer capitalism for the emergence of a greedy economy that is slowly but surely continuing to destroy human consciousness to become homo consumericus. The practical-pragmatic awareness being brought, for example, encourages an unsatisfied desire for consumption and a culture of consumption of disposable goods. It is changing various human habits from traditional lifestyles to modern lifestyles. Consumption habits have changed drastically worldwide, and Indonesia is no exception.

A brief history illustrates the change in the packaging of consumer goods accompanied by an increase in waste in cities in Indonesia. First, the simple packaging culture was marked by the introduction of canned food and packaged drinks, originally in glass bottles, from the 1920s to the 1940s. Second, the plastic culture, post-independence around the 1950s, was marked by the emergence of plastic use in Indonesia.

The lifestyle of consumption based on plastic packaging and the culture of sachets have multiplied the amount of waste generated by the community, not only in cities but also in villages.

In this era, plastic materials started to become part of the needs of people\'s lives. Third, the culture of keresek (plastic bags) and sachets, since the era of the 1990s, was marked by the emergence of packaging for food, drinks, shampoo, medicine in tiny and very practical forms for consumers. The lifestyle of consumption based on plastic packaging and the culture of sachets have multiplied the amount of waste generated by the community, not only in cities but also in villages. In this era, the scavengers began to be "guerrillas" of the environment.

Kompas

The display of the Halodoc application and digital Al Quran services on the Tokopedia page that can be used by netizens, Sunday (17/5/2020).

The sachet culture (along with the keresek culture) of materials that cannot be recycled has created a dilemma. On the one hand, sachet culture can be called “packaging for the people” and is, in some respects, very suitable for the economic capacity of the general public. Such packaging helps small-scale traders and provides consumer products for students living in boarding houses, factory workers, small business employees and others because it is cheap. It is practical for both traders and buyers. Therefore, it is not surprising that sachet culture has also become a pillar of industry and advertising.

However, on the other hand, changes in packaging culture, besides increasing the types of waste, also multiply the volume of waste from time to time. Over the last three decades, the culture of sachets, keresek and beverages in plastic bottles or cups has caused unprecedented waste in public spaces (roads, fields, waterways/rivers/seas, beaches, markets and tourist/entertainment sites).

People\'s dependence on sachet packaging and other plastic materials is difficult to change, due to economic factors and also because of pragmatic and practical reasons. The sachet lifestyle has increasingly strengthened dependence on disposable goods, such as dependence on plastic bags. When food or beverages in sachets and plastic cups are consumed at home, the amount of waste will certainly increase.

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Of course, hazardous household, hospital and industrial waste also worsen the problem. The waste being produced has increased sharply and is increasingly becoming a threat to environmental sustainability because of its non-destructible nature. For example, how are used chemical drugs, factory waste, electronic waste and hundreds of thousands of liters of used cooking oil processed and disposed of in cities in Indonesia every day? Why do so many people still throw the waste into waterways or rivers?

Public civility

As recycling culture and the economy have not fully developed, waste culture must be fought in various ways.

Disposal of garbage in rivers, seas and public spaces carried out by people in general must immediately be stopped with fines or strict legal sanctions. Thus far, school textbooks have been busy teaching children the cognitive aspects of waste prevention, defining what cleanliness and the environment are. They do not invite students to care when they see a dirty environment (affective) or move to take care of the cleanliness of their environment (conative). Schools seem to be concerned only with ceremonies and marches. In the future, students should be invited to roll up their sleeves, go down the school waterways and clean them up.

ARSIP ANGKASA PURA II

Use of digital facilities at PT Angkasa Pura II (Persero), Soekarno-Hatta Airport, Cengkareng, Saturday (28/8/2021).

If schools are responsible for creating public citizens, environmental education must be in the form of real action. In fact, the most important thing is that students are involved from an early age. If students think that environmental hygiene issues are not a shared business, only a matter for the cleaning staff, they will become “little bosses” who want everything to be done, want to be served and have power. These little bosses, when they grow up, instead of caring about a clean environment, may even become supporters of the greed-based economy, polluters or industrial actors who produce waste.

One of the obstacles faced by the community and the government in dealing with the waste problem so far has been the low level of public civic responsibility that has been built, where waste affairs are the responsibility of the janitor, not a shared responsibility.

The absence of civic responsibility is marked by low awareness on the part of the public and industry players in understanding their relationship with the environment. To build environmental connections, some artists, for example, have taken the initiative to turn trash into beautiful works of art. When a sense of aesthetics, a sense of caring and a sense of belonging to a living space extend beyond the private space, then trash culture may not have a place in the public sphere. People will get used to saying, “Don\'t ever pollute our city! Don\'t pollute our river!” The rise of the “post-consumerist generation” will color public spaces in the midst of an environmental crisis.

KOMPAS/MOHAMMAD HILMI FAIQ

Idi Subandy Ibrahim

IDI SUBANDY IBRAHIM,Culture, Media and Communications Researcher

(This article was translated by Hyginus Hardoyo)