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Can Indonesia (and for that matter other non European countries) make a quantum leap
in processing of municipal solid waste.
Waste as a Resource
Antonie de Wilde
Background
Actually only a few countries in Europe achieved a near zero-waste processing of municipal
Solid Waste (MSW). Such as Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands. In 2013, I led a
delegation of Indonesian provincial council heads of public works, and officials of the
ministries of energy and mining (ESDM), economic planning and development (BAPPENAS),
and state-owned companies (PLN and Pertamina) to explore what was done in the Europe and
particularly in the Netherlands and Sweden to resolve the problem of Municipal Solid Waste.
Besides visiting actual facilities in the Netherlands (HVC in Alkmaar, AVB in Amsterdam and
Boras in Sweden), a series of lectures by Swedish and Dutch government officials, European
Waste Management Associations and financial institutions provided inside in the MSW history
of MSW Management. For example, it took Sweden over 20 years, starting in 1991,
introducing laws, regulations, education, to achieve the current level of near zero landfilling.
In 1988 The Amsterdam Waste management utility already started with mass burn, with waste
to energy only from 1993 onwards. But it wasn’t till 2002 that a Dutch politici, Lansink, put
together a solid MSW strategy, internationally known as the ladder of Lansink.

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The examples of HVC, and AEB, in the Netherlands, and Boras in Sweden are good examples
applying the Lansink strategy. Yet, as reported in an article published by Hendrikus de Waart
in 2009, in which he credits AEB as charging the lowest tipping fee in the Netherlands of
EUR75/ton, waste was not yet the profitable resource Lansink and others predicted. It took at
least till 2013, that examples showing that with adequate policies waste management can be
profitable and could actually translate the concept of “using waste as a resource” for a profitable
enterprise, without taxing consumers. See https://www.afvalloont.nl/ and for an interview with
the creator, Jorgen van Rijn, at youtube: https://youtu.be/UnsxgVNulLw
The basic question for Indonesia, that came from this study tour was, can Indonesia make a
quantum leap, in solid waste processing, by adopting the policy lessons learnt over 20 to 30
years in Europe and make waste processing a profitable enterprise?
In a speech, held to review what was learnt from the study tour on November 7 2013, chaired
by Dr. Ir. Dadan Kusdiana, (Secretary General of the new and renewable energy in the Ministry
of Energy and Mining of the Government of Indonesia), I proposed that challenge. A
challenge, which due to the fact that Indonesia, unlike Europe, had not made long-term
investments in Waste Management, Indonesia should be able to achieve. Thus, rather than go
through the 20-30-year learning process of going from landfills to sanitary landfills, penalties
for dumping waste, etc., the question and the theme I was pre-occupied with, can, through a
wise choice of technology, and good leadership, make Indonesia that quantum leap and use
waste as a resource for a profitable public or private enterprise, and allow citizens to actually
save money? Reducing the cost of public works departments, and generating income from
waste, so they can improve their services, improve collection rates, and Mitigate Green House
Gas Emissions.
Figure 1: Slide from MSW discussion with Indonesia Govt. Officials, November 7 2013
This vision, was reinforced by the European Policy on Waste management. Translated in a
brochure which can be downloaded from
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/pdf/WASTE%20BROCHURE.pdf
However, the brochure, while giving a good introduction, appears to be outdated by newer and
in my opinion better policies. (Including to analysis MSW for recycling of rare earth minerals.

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A recent EU policy paper identified over 42 minerals which are cheaper to extract from MSW,
than to mine directly (see figure 3, below)
In the meantime, I have also promoted the concept among my US based ex-World Bank and
IFC colleagues, and USA’s Department of Energy. Several options have been studied from
incineration, without claiming any credit, the Ecogensus process, is one of the by-products of
communicating the vision originally learnt from the waste- pyramid of IR. Lansink, promoted
by the Netherlands Government. But it is a solution which does not have the dangerous by-
products such as dioxin when the plastics in the waste are incinerated.
While more and more research has now focused on separating the plastics out of the waste and
produce gas or oil through a pyrolysis process, the costs for these systems are significantly
higher (more than 10 times higher than incineration) and only deal with 10 to 15% of the waste.
Figure 2: Minerals which can be recovered from MSW
III. Ecogensus
Finally, I believe that our US colleagues, tackled the problem. Ecogensus™ developed the
capability to convert raw solid waste, otherwise landfilled, into an energy-rich resource with
enormous potential benefit for the world (www.ecogensus.com ). The Ecogensus process does
not use chemicals, water or any other additives. Rather than separate organics from non-
organics, as was done earlier in Sweden, or separate the plastics from organics, as done in
pyrolysis processes, the Ecogensus system requires only the separation of glass, metals and
rumble or low cost RDF such as stones concrete wste etc., while all other waste is collected,

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shredded and processed through a patented process, in which molecule changes and convert
the Municipal Solid Waste into a Green Fuel, (a torofraction process, (some nicknamed it as
“rapid pyrolysis”), which has similar characteristics as if it was biomass. No toxins, no
dangerous emissions, but biomass with a caloric content depending on the input, which of
course differs from landfill to landfill from over 10,000 kcal/kg in USA and Europe to
7,000kcal/kg (29308 kJ/kg) or less in countries like Indonesia, where the waste has still a lower
plastic and higher organic content.
Figure 3: Environmental and Social benefits of Ecogensus Fuel
Various international companies such as Technip and SNC Lavelin have tested the technology
and confirmed reports from specialized labs, which compared the green fuel process and
outputs with relevant EPA regulations. Ecogensus produces the proprietary Ecogensus™ solid
fuel, a renewable high-value solid fuel that has a much lower pollution profile than coal. In
most cases, coal power plants and coal boiler operators can use this fuel without any facility
modifications.
IV. Costs
As Indonesia is not yet in a position to pay for the high cost of incineration or even anaerobic
digestion, it appears, that the technology is indeed the quantum leap we were looking for.
While a lot of research has been done on waste processing techniques, few articles are available
comparing the cost of the applicable technologies.
I used as reference an article supervised by the distinguished University of Chicago professors
George Tolley and Stephen Berry, available at the internet:
(franke.uchicago.edu/bigproblems/team6.pdf ) to compare the cost of the various MSW
processing technologies with Ecogensus cost.
The article uses data from Singapore for incineration, data from Netherlands (Tilburg) and
Belgium (Brecht) for anaerobic digestion and for gasification the TPS Termiska plant in Italy
and the Battelle - Colombus plant in Ohio, USA.

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While there are still a lot of questions to be asked about assumptions used in the model, it gives
one of the better examples available in the literature. Besides the pure economic costs from an
investment point of view, it also examines the social costs. To compute
the net social costs, the authors deducted the total private and external benefits from the total
private and external costs. Private costs in each option comprises the annualized capital costs
and the yearly operating costs associated with the management of one ton of MSW. External
costs arise from the emissions released under each option. As for the private benefits of
each option, they are the avoided production costs of electricity generated from the
management of each ton of MSW. The external benefits are the avoided costs to the
environment using fossil fuel, that would otherwise have resulted from emissions associated
with electricity production in other power plants. As the Ecogensus plant does not produce
electricity but green fuel, the external costs and benefits are obviously compared with green
fuel production and the related emissions from replacing coal, rather than electricity. The paper
utilizes a 7% discount rate, which I also used for the Ecogensus costs to calculate the present
value of any costs and benefits. All dollar values quoted were in 2007 US dollars to make a
useful comparison I converted these values in 2017 US dollar value.
V. Cost Comparison
Fig 5 below shows the comparison of the four-processing system. The first three systems:
incineration, anaerobic digestion and gasification are based on technology systems of 2007.
Although I provided the cost in US$ value of 2017, there are some efficiencies made since that
time. For example anaerobic systems can be better controlled through the development of new
enzymes, but while this improves the reliability (more generating hours/ year), these have made
the operating cost also more expensive.
A shortcoming of this comparison is that it doesn’t take into account the costs and benefits of
the increase in recycling. Using the Ecogensus system, have additional private and social
benefits as the system now is profitable enough to actually pay for waste. Most importantly it
can buy the plastic bottles from scavengers but also provide additional income for poorest of
the poor by paying them for every 5 or 10 kg waste collected and delivered at collection trucks.
Much like the above quoted “afvalloont” (waste rewards). These additional benefits had not
been taken into account in the reference article and are therefore not included in the Ecogensus
cost and benefits either.
An important difference with the other technologies in Fig 5, is that the Ecogensus system
produces green fuel, and replaces coal, resulting in significant social benefits as the GHG
emissions from coal are reduced due to the replacement by Ecogensus Green Fuel.
The private costs for incineration include both annualized capital and annual operating cost,
which in contrast to the other technologies were not broken out in the article.
Fig 5 Comparing cost of different MSW processing systems

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VI Caveats of the Cost-Benefit Analysis
Low High Low High
Private costs Incineration costs per MSW ton
Landfill costs
External costs Emissions from incineration plant $6.05 $18.93 7.14 22.35
Total social costs= Private costs + External costs $64.55 $77.43 76.21 91.41
Benefits per ton MSW High Low
Private benefits Electricity generation
External benefits
Avoided environmental cost associated with
electricity generation
Total social costs= Private benefits + External benefits
Net social costs= Total social costs - Total social benefits $0.23 $13.11 0.27 15.48
Low High Low High
Private costs Annualized capital costs $36.87 45.07 $43.29 $52.91
Yearly operating costs $38.21 46.71 $44.86 $54.84
External costs Carbon emissions from anaerobic digestion process $0.17 0.53 $0.20 $0.62
Total social costs= Private costs + External costs $75.25 92.31 $88.34 $108.37
Benefits per ton MSW High Low High Low
Private benefits Electricity generation $10.52 4.71 $12.35 $5.53
Sale of compost $11.36
External benefits
Avoided environmental cost associated with
electricity generation $5.98 $2.68 $7.02 $3.15
Total social costs Private benefits + External benefits $26.18 $17.07 $30.74 $20.04
Net social costs= Total social costs - Total social benefits $49.07 $58.18 $57.61 $68.30
Low High
Private costs Annualized capital costs $24.23 $29.65 $28.45 $34.81
Yearly operating costs $16.56 $20.24 $19.44 $23.76
External costs Carbon emissions from gasification process $2.61 $5.39 $3.06 $6.33
Total social costs= Private costs + External costs $43.40 $55.28 $50.95 $64.90
Benefits per ton MSW High Low
Private benefits Electricity generation
External benefits Avoided environmental cost associated with electricity generation
Total social benefits= Private benefits + External benefits
Net social costs= Total social costs - Total social benefits ($57.85) ($45.97) ($67.92) ($53.97)
Ecogensus
Cost per ton MSW High Low High Low
Private Cost Annulized capital costs
Yearly operating costs
External Cost Carbon emission from conversion process (electricity use)
Total Social Cost Private cost + External Cost
Benefits per ton MSW High Low High Low
Private benefits generation of green fuel
External benefits
Avoided environmental cost associated with
replacing coal. (assumption US$5/tCo2)
Total social benefits= Private benefits + External benefits
Net social costs= Total social costs - Total social benefits
Incineration 2007
Anaerobic digestion 2007
Gasification 2007
2017
2017
2017
48.42
27.52
75.94
$50.95
$11.31
$8.90
$21.21
$43.09
$118.87
2017
62.93
6.14
$64.32
$9.68
$64.55
$36.70
$101.25
Costs per ton MSW
Costs per ton MSW
Costs per ton MSW
$53.30
$5.20
$41.01
$23.31
($124.89)
$26.10
< $1
$120
$146.10

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There are a number of caveats that need to be considered when using the results of the cost
benefit analysis. In the first place assumptions regarding the quantification of environmental
cost of emissions, and 2, estimating the overall electricity generation when specific waste
streams are used. A recent publicly available feasibility study for Malang (FY11) in Indonesia
indicated actual somewhat lower annual capital and operational costs than the two Singapore
units. (www.meti.go.jp/meti_lib/report/2012fy/E001982-2.pdf ) . For detailed discussion I
refer to par 3.4 of the quoted original article: (franke.uchicago.edu/bigproblems/team6.pdf )
VII Indonesia Benefits
Indonesia stands to benefit by freeing up coal for export, but even more important it will be
able to replace a significant amount of coal used in their utilities as shown in table 2. And thus
reduce a significant amount of Greenhouse gas emissions. On a national scale this could
hypothetical be 159 million tCO2
Fig 6: Mitigation potential in Indonesia
Indonesia Potential
See Jakarta Post
October 9, 2015, Hans
Nicholas Jong
Waste Generated 64 million ton
Waste Processed for Energy 46 million ton
Green Ecogensus fuel
produced
30 million ton
Ecogensus fuel
Mitigation potential 159 million tCO2
VIII Summary
In comparison with traditional MSW processing such as incineration, anaerobic digestion,
gasification, Ecogensus is clearly not only the cheapest, it also brings the most environmental
benefits. Further analysis with Plasma Gasification Melting and Pyrolysis, will be made in the
near future, although from a cost perspective it is already well established that these
technologies are more expensive than incineration and thus more expensive than Ecogensus
fuel system. Based on investment cost per ton of waste, Fig gives a clear summary.
Fig 7 Annualized capital and operating expenses per MSW ton for different technologies
Incineration cost/ton MSW $62.93
Anaerobic cost/ton MSW $75.08
Gasification cost/ton MSW $40.79
Ecogensus cost/ton MSW $20.21