[Kabar-indonesia] Sumatra firm turns waste into organic fertilizer

[Joyo at aol.com]

The Jakarta Post
Monday, October 9, 2006

Firm turns waste into organic fertilizer 

Apriadi Gunawan, The Jakarta Post, Asahan

The afternoon rain had soaked the four women who are packing plastic bags 
with fertilizer, but the drizzle failed to prevent the workers from finishing 
their tasks at the fertilizer factory in North Sumatra's Gunung Melayu plantation.

The energetic women, who are paid Rp 30,000 (US$3.30) for a seven hour day, 
are able to fill several bags quickly. 

The packed fertilizer is then ready to be delivered and scattered at PT Asian 
Agri's oil palm plantation in Gunung Melayu in Batu Anam village, Bandar 
Pulau district in Asahan regency. 

Asian Agri's Gunung Melayu plantation group manager, Bukit Sanjaya, said the 
company has been using the self-produced organic compost fertilizer since 
February 2006. He said the manufacturing process had been planned October 2005 to 
use solid and liquid palm oil waste. 

He said the waste had caused environmental problems such as air and water 
pollution. In response to the issue, Bukit said the company had taken steps to 
initiate the Integrated Composting Project, which turns the waste into organic 
fertilizer. 

"We have invested Rp 3 billion (US$326,086) in the project, including land 
and equipment procurement, in order to realize the zero waste discharge 
program," Bukit told The Jakarta Post in a tour of the facility some 200 km south of 
the provincial capital Medan. 

With the project, the company will no longer have to dump waste into the 
environment. 

Bukit said using oil palm stems from fresh palm oil fruit bunches as raw 
material for the fertilizer meant they would no longer be burned, minimizing air 
pollution and meaning rivers would not be polluted with the liquid waste. 

The company's palm oil technologist, Jong Tjien, explained that empty palm 
fruit stems from fresh fruit bunches would initially go through the mincing 
process and be heaped evenly in the open to let them decompose for 10 weeks. 

The substance is then turned over once every three days to prevent foul 
smells during the decomposing process. After 10 weeks, it is mixed with the liquid 
waste and is ready to fertilize oil palm trees. 

Asked how much fertilizer the factory could produce at a time, Jong said it 
would depend on the production volume of fresh fruit bunches. 

"A ton of fresh fruit bunches can produce 20 percent empty stems and 60 
percent liquid waste," said Jong, adding that the organic fertilizer is rich in 
nutrients for plants and can enhance soil fertility as it contains nitrogen, 
phosphate, magnesium, calcium and organic carbon. 

When asked whether or not the company had applied the fertilizer to its 
entire oil palm plantation in Gunung Melayu, spanning 12,738 hectares, group 
manager Bukit said that only 1,500 hectares of it had been treated with the 
fertilizer. 

Apart from organic fertilizer, the company has also used chemical fertilizers 
to enrich palm oil trees in the Gunung Melayu plantation. 

"We will gradually provide 8 kilos of chemical fertilizer and 80 kilos of 
organic fertilizer to a tree once a year," said Bukit. 

Bukit said the company had not yet treated the entire plantation with the 
organic compost fertilizer since its effects were yet to be tested. 

"We don't want to rush things before knowing the test results conducted by 
our team, because it concerns the productivity and performance of the company in 
the future," said Bukit, adding that test results would only be known in the 
next three years. 

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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