An important message from IPB Green Festival: By 2050, The Amount of Plastic Wastes in the Sea Will Be Bigger Than The Amount of Fish

The Ministry of Environment (LH) of Student Executive Body (BEM) of Student Family (KM) Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) held Green Festival as a form of persuasion to the students and society to be more caring to the environment. Carrying the theme of “Rising Spirit for Indonesia as The Green Lifestyle Center”, the festival was held in IPB Baranangsiang Campus, Bogor (14/10) and it was also attended not only by the adults, but also the children. This year’s Green Festival was the first one to be held to serve the purpose of embracing more people to be put more concern on the environment.

The FunBike event, in which 100 bikers were participating, was a partnership between two communities; Bike to Campus IPB and Bogor Pixie Bike Community. Besides that, children were also introduced to the environment through colouring competition. In the afternoon, the participants’ knowledge was also enriched through educative talkshow about environment directly from the experts, which were Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) and Department of Environment of Bogor.

Vice Rector for Education and Student Affairs, Dr. Drajat Martianto in his speech conveyed that currently climate condition was getting more unstable, one of the examples was about the shift in rainfall. The period of rainfall changed to be shorter with higher intensity of rain. In the long term, this condition was worsened by the decreasing land productivity.

“Extreme weather like this could impact to food scarcity. That is why, IPB, in this case BEM KM, tried to open the students and society’s insights to become more aware towards surrounding environment and climate. One of the ways was through the talkshow with the environment experts,” he said.

The Green Festival Talkshow invited Director General of Climate Change Management, Dr. Ruandha Agung Sugardiman, Director of Waste Management, Dr. Novrizal Tahar and Head of the Partnership and Capacity Building Section of the Bogor City Environmental Office, Setiawati, M.Sc.

“Indonesian Government has an obligation to provide healthy environment to its people. The focus of KLHK right now is to nurture the existing forest to not be allocated into economical means. Currently we are also working on the protection of forests from the heat impact of El-Nino storm in Indonesia. This aims to anticipate fire,” said Dr. Ruandha.

The waste problem is also as serious as the others. Dr. Novrizal explained that by 2015, the amount of plastic waste will outnumber the amount of fish. This condition is without doubt very dangerous for the livelihood of all living organisms.

“There has been a false mindset all this time. We should no longer think ‘where to dispose my waste?’ but we should start thinking ‘how is our responsibility to our own waste?’ he stated.

We indeed should start raise awareness in ourselves. The problem of waste must be dealt with from the source. Bogor City has implemented the Waste Bank in the Temporary Disposal Site (TPS).

“We targeted the maximum amount of waste that will be transferred to Galuga (End Disposal Site – TPA) should only be 20%, the rest must be able to be processed into new products,” said Setiawati. This alumni IPB also explained that starting from December 2018, The Bogor City Government will implement the banning of plastic to all modern store and shopping center in Bogor City.

Green Festival 2018 also attracted many attentions for providing Zoo Zone for those who wanted to take a closer look towards animals. In addition to that, the event, which was the biggest environmental care in IPB, also implemented Zero Management Waste, so there was not any waste found in the area.

“We implemented the zero waste management concept in this festival. We usually saw many wastes after an event, but we want to prove that this festival is waste free. Our hope is simple, we want the people to at least carry goodie bag and personal straw wherever they go after joining this event,” said Yeni, IPB student as Head of Organizing Committee. (CN)