2024 Volume 12 Issue 3 Pages 238-257
The repercussions of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have expanded far beyond public health crisis, affecting the solid waste management system. The countermeasures to curb virus transmission have caused a major shift in waste generation pattern and composition. As a response, governments and international entities around the world – including Indonesia – establish a set of guidelines on solid waste that ensure safety for all while upholding the principle of a circular economy of waste through reducing, reusing, and recycling. This study aims to understand stakeholders’ involvement in household solid waste management (HSWM) in Pontianak City during the COVID-19 pandemic. A social network analysis was employed to pinpoint the stakeholders, their roles, characteristics, knowledge, and interactions in a case study area of Pontianak, Indonesia. The findings reveal that social network analysis conducted in this study highlights the interaction dynamic among the stakeholders. The Environmental Agency of Pontianak municipality is the central stakeholder in all centrality measurements. Meanwhile, the informal private sectors were constantly identified as the least central stakeholders within the household solid waste management network. Furthermore, the findings highlighted that stakeholder tend to interact with others within the same stakeholder group, representing the dysconnectivity of the network.
Coronavirus disease 2019 has brought unprecedented repercussions beyond the public health crisis, affecting global societies and economies (Cui & Ahmad Bhat, 2022). By 4 July 2021, there are more than 180 million confirmed cases around the world, with nearly 4 million deaths (WHO 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic disrupts all aspects in the routine of normal human live (Torkashvand et al., 2021), including solid waste management (Sinha et al., 2020). The shift in people's lifestyle due to mobility restriction policies as well as public health measures to curb virus transmission has caused notable changes in terms of the quantity and the composition of solid waste generation (Nzeadibe & Ejike-Alieji, 2020; Yousefi et al., 2021). Sudden surge in medical waste is also inevitable due to medical treatments during the pandemic (Ganguly & Chakraborty, 2021). An increase in household waste generation is also evident because mobility restriction policies alter the concentration of human activities from commercial and office areas to residential areas (Das et al., 2021). The household waste composition becomes more complex due to infectious waste from households containing mandatory quarantine and/or home treatment for COVID-19 confirmed cases and suspects (Cui & Ahmad Bhat, 2022).
In response to the pandemic impacts on waste management, governments worldwide have been implementing adjustments in their waste management system to maintain the services and prevent the likelihood of virus transmission along the waste management system (Ledraa & Aldegheishem, 2023; Nasiri et al., 2023). In many developing countries, unsustainable waste management practices increase vulnerability to coronavirus transmission through waste management procedures (Singh et al., 2022). Like all other nations, Indonesia struggles to mitigate the pandemic’s emergency consequences in all sectors. Numerous countermeasures have been enforced to reduce the impacts of the pandemic on its public health, economic, and solid waste management. Like other developing countries, waste management continuously becomes a major environmental concern in Indonesia (Sabarinah, 2017). The pandemic exacerbates Indonesia’s – already inadequate – waste management system. The country must now deal with a sudden surge in medical or healthcare waste from medical facilities with limited waste treatment infrastructure. Moreover, it must deal with the change in household waste generation as well. To respond the immediate concerns on waste management, the government of Indonesia has published specific policy and guidelines to mitigate COVID-19 impacts to its solid waste management. At the same time, the Indonesian government aims to maintain the conduct of reducing, reusing, and recycling to embody a circular economy of waste and achieve sustainability.
In the context of the current pandemic, extensive research has been conducted to study the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic to solid waste management (Das et al., 2021; Ganguly & Chakraborty, 2021; Liang et al., 2021; Nzeadibe & Ejike-Alieji, 2020; Torkashvand et al., 2021; Yousefi et al., 2021). However, these studies address mostly the technical aspects of the waste management system. Although stakeholders’ involvement is mentioned in these studies, it was not thoroughly explored. Stakeholders play an important role in waste management and can reduce the spread of the Covid-19 virus. In their respective operational sectors (political, economic, and social), stakeholders such as the government, enterprises/investors, consumers, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should be empowered to take appropriate actions and make informed choices (Ebner & Iacovidou, 2021).
To bridge the gap, this research focuses on the stakeholders involvement in household solid waste management, specifically during the pandemic. It is essential to integrate stakeholders into the overall waste management process by harnessing their collective strength, which is identified through a clear division of roles and responsibilities (Caniato et al., 2014). Lack of involvement from stakeholders outside the local government authorities remains the main reason for inadequate solid waste management. These include low awareness, problems with coordination and bureaucracy, lack of effective communication, and unwillingness to change current waste management behaviour (Le et al., 2018). Le et al. (2018) further emphasized that these problems exist among stakeholders.
Based on that, this study then aims to assess the implementation of this specific policy in the municipality level in the case study area of Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. In this regard, as household solid waste management remains crucial in ensuring public health during the pandemic, this study aims to understand how the current policy and guidelines are implemented through the lense of the stakeholders involved. This research identifies the stakeholders, their roles, characteristics, as well as their knowledge and interactions in household solid waste management. Then, this study generates immediate concerns on the waste management system representing the existing policy gaps.
This research contributes to understanding the non-technical aspects of a specific waste management system – household solid waste management (HSWM) – during the pandemic through the stakeholders’ perspective. This study provides not only the identification of the stakeholders involved, but also on their specific roles in HSWM daily operations. It contributes to assessing whether a stakeholder has been performing the expected roles in HSWM. In addition, this study presents the stakeholders’ mapping based on their power and interest, in which each stakeholder is put into a specific category. These categories can be used as a source of information in determining more efficient and targeted approaches to improve stakeholders’ involvement in HSWM. Identifying stakeholders’ knowledge contributes to pointing out the knowledge gap that hinders their active participation in waste management.
Furthermore, as this study presents the interactions among stakeholders in HSWM, it may contribute to creating the potential ways to strengthen and build the critical ties among actors in HSWM. Through social network analysis (SNA) conducted in this study, the flow of information among the stakeholders was identified. Understanding this information flow is essential to improve overall knowledge distribution and awareness necessary for a successful and sustainable waste management.
According to Schmeer (2000), a stakeholder is defined as actors – person or organization – who have interest in certain policy. Furthermore, stakeholder refers to those who are affected by the issue, have, or could have influenced the decision-making process and policy implementation (Dos Muchangos et al., 2017). Therefore, in this study, stakeholder is defined as the actors who have interest, are affected, and/or can influence the overall waste management policy (formulation, implementation, and evaluation).
The integration of stakeholders is essential in realizing sustainability in waste management (Caniato et al., 2014; Dos Muchangos et al., 2017; Paramitadewi, 2014; Van de Klundert & Anschutz, 2001; Vutivoradit & Jakkapattarawong, 2018); Van de Klundert & Anschutz, (2001) further emphasized that it is essential in ensuring co-operation and co-ordination between multiple stakeholder groups to increase sustainability of waste management system, including initiating behavioural changes, and sharing the financial responsibilities. Furthermore, they highlighted the consequences of ignoring certain activities and stakeholder group/s may lead to decrease in waste management system sustainability.
As stakeholders’ involvement is essential in waste management, this study focuses on the stakeholders' roles and alliances within the waste management policy, including policy formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. It is crucial to analyse the stakeholders, roles, interests, power structures, and alliances to achieve sustainability in waste management (Klundert & Anschiitz, 2000; Van de Klundert & Anschutz, 2001) using line-breaks.
To achieve resilience development for sustainable waste management, cooperation, and interaction among stakeholders in all levels remain crucial in line with the improvement of the overall waste management system (Chen, 2022). Households play an essential role in ensuring material reuse and recycling by conducting proper and safe source separation. Knowledge dissemination should be done so that the stakeholders cooperate and become involved in sustainable and safe waste management. It is essential to improve the knowledge on why, what, and how to implement solid waste management system (Ma & Hipel, 2016) to achieve sustainability in waste management, not only as an emergency response towards the pandemic but also to develop resilience and be better prepared for future.
COVID-19 pandemic: The implications on household waste managementThe world has been struggling to fight the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since the WHO declaration of the bal pandemic on 11 March 2020. The impacts of the global pandemic have expanded beyond public (United Nations Environment Programme, 2020). Although the transmission of the virus is mostly through respiratory droplets, concerns have been raised regarding the likelihood of virus transmission through COVID-19 contaminated surfaces health sector, including waste management (Das et al., 2021; Ganguly & Chakraborty, 2021; Yousefi et al., 2021). Thus, the pandemic brings additional challenges to waste management system (Ye et al., 2022).
The impacts of COVID-19 pandemic to waste management is the rapid change of the amout of the waste as well as its composition (United Nations Environment Programme, 2020). These sudden changes occur due to change of lifestyle as an adjustment to current pandemic and change in public health needs which trigger changes in production and consumption rates in specific parts (Yousefi et al., 2021). As mobility restriction policies were imposed across the globe, waste generation is concentrated in residential areas instead of commercial ones (Das et al., 2021). Moreover, the pandemic alters how people shop, converting to online shopping. It leads to major surge in plastic waste generation(Yousefi et al., 2021). Not only are the disruptions caused by the pandemic obvious in waste generation, they are also apparent in the rest of waste management system.
The context of Indonesia: The government response on household solid waste management challenges during COVID-19 pandemicAs per 2 July 2021, there have been more than 2 million COVID-19 confirmed cases in Indonesia with near to 60,000 deaths. Like many other nations, Indonesia imposes the mobility restriction policies to contain the virus transmission (Prasetya et al., 2022; Purwanto et al., 2021) . This leads to changes in waste generation as well as its composition. According to Indonesia Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF), household solid waste generation increases by 36%. On the other hand, notable decrease is apparent in waste generation from commercial areas.
To respond the emerging challenges in waste management due to COVID-19 pandemic, Indonesian government through the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) established the guidelines (Figure 1) for infectious waste and household waste management. The ministry published a circular letter on 24 March 2020, addressed to COVID-19 pandemic mitigation workforce, provincial governments, as well as regency and city governments across Indonesia. MoEF and other relevant stakeholders such as Ministry of Health (MoH), NGOs, and other international organizations published a pocketbook containing graphical information on infectious waste coming from households and regular household waste management. Figure 1 illustrates household solid waste management system based on the guidelines as mentioned earlier.
Indonesia government implements the conducts of infectious waste management coming from households like other forementioned international guidelines (Ariyaningsih et al., 2021). The practice of the 3Rs principle is encouraged even during the pandemic in both household categories. The healthy household members in households containing COVID-19 should conduct 3Rs principle as well as the all healthy households. However, there is no waiting time for discharging the infectious waste for collection service. Based on the circular letter of Indonesian MoEF, the agencies of environment and health are responsible for collecting and transporting the infectious waste from households. Furthermore, the government is responsible for disseminating the safe conducts of infectious waste management in households to the public accordingly.
As medical waste increases by around 30% in Indonesia during the pandemic, there has been growing concern on the leak of medical and infectious waste like gloves and face masks in the waters due to mismanagement. There are around 100 million disposable masks worn by Indonesian each day. According to guideline of mask waste treatment published by Indonesian Ministry of Health (MoH), face masks coming from households are not categorized as medical waste. Nonetheless, the used face masks should be properly treated to prevent cross contamination as well as re-selling the used masks. Used face masks should be disinfected and torn prior to disposing them to trash can COVID-19 has caused notable repercussions to overall solid waste management system. As governments worldwide have made the necessary adjustments to ensure public health and safety conducts of waste management, further disseminating this adjustment to the public is urgently needed. This should be done to improve all the stakeholders’ knowledge of the changes in the waste management system.
From the literature review, it can be inferred that COVID-19 has caused notable repercussions to overall solid waste management system. As governments worldwide have made the necessary adjustments to ensure public health and safety conducts of waste management, there is an urgent need to disseminate this adjustment to the public further. This should be done in order to improve all the stakeholders’ knowledge of the changes in the waste management system. Therefore, based on the forementioned literature review, this study aims to understand the stakeholder’s interaction, and their knowledge in household solid waste management.
The stakeholders’ practice of household solid waste management during COVID-19 pandemicThis study identifies changes in household solid waste management practices during the pandemic, mainly in households with COVID-19 suspects and confirmed patients, and/or people under mandatory quarantine. The change is found mainly in the waste separation practice which is presented in Figure 2. These households aware that waste separation should be done more carefully to prevent the possibilities of virus transmission. The COVID-19 suspects and patients treated at home prepared a separate trash can with a plastic bag inside, located in the isolation room. Once this trash can was full, it would be disinfected prior to being put together with other household waste plastic bags. Then, these bags would be either collected by community waste collection service or brought to municipal waste container nearby. As for the regular households, they do not conduct HSWM differently than the practice prior to the pandemic.
Several disruptions in the overall HSWM were also apparent in waste collection and treatment. However, these disruptions were mainly caused by large-scale social restrictions (LSR), especially during the early pandemic. The waste workers and the Environmental Agency of Pontianak municipality had to do sudden adjustments to ensure safe conducts of waste management services align with the virus transmission prevention measures. Waste treatment was also disrupted due to the implementation of LSR which led to decrease in organic waste supply for waste composting enterprises (WCE). Moreover, the pandemic also brings disruptions in waste recycling. Based on the interviews, people are found to be more reluctant to go to the waste bank to recycle their household waste.
This study took place in the city of Pontianak (which can be seen at Figure 3), West Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. The stakeholders assessed in this study are those who are involved in HSWM in the city. Like other cities in developing nations, solid waste management has been challenging for Pontianak.
It is due to limited resources and inadequate stakeholders’ involvement in Pontianak’s solid waste management. In addition, COVID-19 pandemic adds to the complexity of waste management challenges in the city as the city has very limited resources in handling infectious waste. Based on these reasons, the city of Pontianak was selected as the case study location.
This research is mixed-method research, combining qualitative and quantitative method in data collection and analysis. Qualitative method was used in data collection including document review and semi-structured interviews. These methods were utilized to explore the overall practice of HSWM in Indonesia as well as in Pontianak. In addition, the qualitative data collection methods were used to identify the stakeholders and their roles in HSWM during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, quantitative method was used in collecting data for network analysis, which was done through semi-structured interviews. The documents reviewed in this study consist mostly of policies regarding HSWM in the national level of Indonesia, provincial level of West Kalimantan, and city level of Pontianak both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Eight Indonesian policy documents were reviewed in this research, which consist of five national level policies, one provincial level policy, and two city level policies. Most policies address general HSWM, while policies regarding HSWM during COVID-19 are limited. There are two national policies that provide guidelines for the practices of HSWM during the COVID-19 pandemic. To complement this limited literature, global guidelines such as those published by multinationals organizations and nations union, as well as scientific literature regarding practices of HSWM were reviewed.
The design of the interview guide was grounded on various scholarly works to assess the stakeholder’s involvement in HSWM during COVID-19 pandemic in the case study area of Pontianak, Indonesia. The applied definition of knowledge, position, power, and interest in this research were adapted based on the World Health Organization (WHO) stakeholder analysis toolkit (Schmeer, 2000), as well as for the scoring used. The applied definitions and scoring method in this research have been previously utilized in several research to assess the stakeholders on several types of waste management, such as infectious waste management in Bangkok (Caniato et al., 2014) and composting in municipal solid waste in Hanoi (Le, Nguyen et al., 2018).
Method and analysis toolsData analysis was done in both qualitative and quantitative methods as well. The qualitative method was implemented through descriptive analysis and stakeholder analysis. These analyses were used to explore the stakeholders’ characteristics and identify the policy gaps of HSWM. As for the quantitative method, Social Network Analysis (SNA) was used in this study. It aims to identify important stakeholders and visualize the relationships among them in the implementation of HSWM in Pontianak during pandemic.
This study utilized multiple methods to analyse the data shown in Figure 4. The overall analysis aims to understand the stakeholders in HSWM in Pontianak municipality, including each stakeholder's roles, characteristics, knowledge, attitude, and interactions within HSWM operations. This study aims to identify the policy gaps of HSWM implementation in Pontianak through the analysis.
In SNA, centrality is one of the prominent measures for quantifying actors’ interconnectedness within a social network. In the context of this study, actors refer to the stakeholders involved in HSWM in the study area. Meanwhile, relationships represent the connectivity among the stakeholders in a collaboration network of HSWM. The relationships studied in this research address both formal and informal relationships. Four centrality measurements are utilized in this research:
(1) Degree centrality is a count of the number of connections linked to a node (actor). A high degree actor refers to the one who has the most direct connections to other actors.
(2) Betweenness centrality – It identifies the most central actor who plays the role as the intermediary between other actors. This actor is essential in connecting other actors.
(3) Closeness centrality – It identifies the actor who has the shortest path to reach others within the network. The central actor is the one who has the closest path to the other actors within a network.
(4) Eigenvector centrality – It identifies the actor with high prestige, who is also connected with other prestigious actors. The central actor is represented by that who has the highest eigenvector centrality value.
This study categorizes the stakeholders by utilizing power versus interest matrix proposed by (Bryson et al., 2011). Figure 5 represents the mapping of stakeholders based on power versus interest in the overall waste management policy. Herein, power refers to the ability of the stakeholders to affect the implementation of HSWM during COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, interest refers to the level of interest and concern each stakeholder must involve in HSWM.
Based on the data obtained through the semi-structured interviews, the stakeholders’ attitude towards HSWM is generally supportive. Highly supportive stakeholders are those belong to governmental authorities who are directly involved in HSWM system. The mapping of Stakeholders’ Attitude towards HSWM can be seen at Figure 6.
This study utilizes network analysis using Gephi, to examine how the stakeholders interact in household solid waste management. Four stakeholders’ network diagrams were developed based on four centrality values (See Figure 7): (1) degree; (2) betweenness; (3) closeness; (4) eigenvector, as well as modularity class. The colours of the nodes in the network diagrams show the stakeholder group with whom they are associated. The size of the nodes represents the centrality value, the larger the nodes, the higher the value. The colour of the edges indicates the intensity of interaction. Red edges indicate regular interaction, while infrequent interaction is indicated by blue edges. The interactions are represented by the orientation of the edges, which are directed. In addition, this research examines the network's modularity class in order to discover stakeholder communities.
The overall network analysis highlights the dysconnectivity of the whole waste management system elements. It is reflected by the network density measurement, which yielded a result of 0.178 out of 1. This number indicates that the stakeholder connections are limited in comparison to the possibilities of fully connected stakeholders.
The centrality measurements highlight the trend on the interactions among the stakeholders. The interaction was then mapped by grouping the most and least central stakeholders, as shown in Table 1. Governmental authorities remain as the network's most central actors. Because they are responsible for delivering waste management services to the public, DLH is the most central player across all four centrality measurements. BAPPEDA and DINKES are two of the most important players in the government authority group. It's worth noting that the governmental authorities who are among the central actors are those within local governments who connect with other stakeholders more closely.
| Centrality | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Degree | Betweenness | Closeness | Eigenvector | |
| Top 5 | DLH | DLH | DLH | DLH |
| BAPPEDA | Household COVID-19 | WCE | CBOs | |
| Household COVID-19 | Household | CE | Academia | |
| CBOs | PDAM | BAPPEDA | BAPPEDA | |
| Academia | DINKES | PDAM | Social Media | |
| Bottom 5 | MoF | TPST | DISKOMINFO | MoF |
| DISKOMINFO | IWB | CWCS | IWB | |
| IWB | DISKOMINFO | IWB | MoH | |
| MoH | DLH Prov | Waste Picker | CWCS | |
| CWCS | MoF | MoH | Waste Picker | |
In the HSWM stakeholders' network, service users are also among the most important stakeholders. According to the semi-structured interviews, households as service users are critical to effective waste management. In terms of degree and betweenness, households are at the center. COVID-19 households have more ties with other stakeholders, making them central actors to a degree. In terms of betweenness, both types of households are critical stakeholders who serve as a link between other stakeholders in the network.
In terms of degree and eigenvector, academia is also a key player. It indicates that academia is regarded as a stakeholder interacting with many stakeholders while also being renowned. WCE and CE are the only formal private sectors that are central actors. In terms of eigenvector, it is critical to emphasize that social media is one of the most important stakeholders. It denotes how social media interacts with other key stakeholders in the waste management system.
In terms of the least central actors, waste pickers, CWCS, and IWB are classified as the least central in all four centrality categories. It reflects the gap between these stakeholders and other system elements. The MoF, MoH, DLH Provincial Level, and DISKOMINFO are among the least central stakeholders because they are not directly involved in implementing household waste management. In terms of betweenness, TPST is the least central waste treatment facility.
The network's modularity class was then examined better to understand the trend of interactions among the stakeholders. Modularity class analysis identified the three communities established within the stakeholders’ interaction network. It can be assumed that the stakeholders engage with each other within the same stakeholder group. The first community consists of eleven purple nodes including all government agencies and PDAM, the municipal water company owned by Pontianak government, which is assigned to the other stakeholders’ group. The second community consists of eight orange nodes representing eight private sector stakeholders, service users, and social media. According to the interviews, the private sector interacts with HSWM households frequently. In the daily and occasional waste collection service, both the formal and informal private sectors deal closely with households. This community uses social media because it is a source of household information about HSWM. The private sector uses social media to promote its products and services.
The findings of this study identify several apparent gaps regarding the practice of household solid waste management during the pandemic. In general, waste management in Pontianak municipality does not yet embody the principle of circular economy through reduce, reuse, and recycle. The main reason identified is due to the low waste separation. This study was further identified the reasons causing this low practice of household separation which come in three folds : (1) people are discouraged to separate their waste since they know the sorted waste will be mixed together in the next waste management flow; (2) lack of recycling facilities that are easy to reach; and (3) the government has not yet optimally enforcing waste separation through clear legal framework. Thus, waste recycling cannot be well implemented in the municipality.
The risk category of COVID-19 transmission in the city determines the application of large-scale social mobility restrictions. As a result, once adopted, it affects both the distribution of waste generation and the volume of waste produced. Due to the closing of waste banks, it also has an impact on waste recycling. Figure 9 illustrates the impact of policy measures taken during the COVID-19 epidemic on waste management in the Pontianak municipality.
In Pontianak, the waste generation composition gets more complex. Those who have been infected with COVID-19 but have only moderate symptoms should self-quarantine and be treated at home to lessen the load on limited medical resources and personnel. As a result, infectious waste is produced in homes as well. This poses a new risk to trash workers, particularly during the collection and transportation stages of the waste management system.
Waste management in the Pontianak municipality still does not follow the circular economy principles of reduce, reuse, and recycle. The fundamental reason is the low waste separation at the source. The causes of the low practice of household separation can be divided into three categories: (1) people are discouraged from sorting their waste because they know it will be mixed in the next waste management flow; (2) there are no easily accessible recycling facilities; and (3) the government has not yet efficiently enforced waste separation through a clear legal framework. As a result, waste recycling in the municipality will be difficult to accomplish.
During a pandemic, the Pontianak municipality does not implement the entire set of requirements for home solid waste management, particularly for infectious waste management from households infected with COVID-19. The municipality is said to provide waste collection services for COVID-19-infected households in two ways: (1) door-to-door pickup and (2) infectious waste drop-off. To protect the safety of the infectious trash, it was transported in a specific sort of vehicle. Waste workers should be provided with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to reduce the danger of viral infection.
According to the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry's (MoEF) instructions and circular letter on infectious waste management from households, the environment and/or health agencies are responsible for addressing this type of waste. As a result, determining the competent agency is up to each municipality. However, the Pontianak municipality has yet to specify which body manages domestic infectious garbage.
Due to a lack of data sharing among essential stakeholders, such as DLH, DINKES, and households with COVID-19, it is not viable to undertake door-to-door infectious waste management collection service in Pontianak municipality. DINKES, as the public health authority, has the data on which households have people with COVID-19. However, due to doctor-patient confidentiality, DINKES cannot discuss the specifics of these data with anyone. It all depends on whether the patients agree to share their data.
Only a few stakeholders, including the MoEF, MoH, DLH, and DINKES, have complete knowledge on performing HSWM during a pandemic. All of these parties are representatives of the government. Vertical communication between local and national authorities connects MoEF-DLH and MoH-DLH. As a result, these interactions, which involve information sharing, occur on a regular basis. HSWM guidelines set by the relevant ministries were distributed to local authorities during the pandemic. This frequent interaction allows the provincial and local government authorities to understand HSWM thoroughly during a pandemic. The information, on the other hand, was not widely distributed among other stakeholders. Other than governmental authorities, the media -local mass media and social media- have a general understanding of HSWM during the pandemic since they have frequent interaction with governmental authorities. Meanwhile, the rest of the stakeholder groups only have a limited understanding of HSWM during the pandemic. Notably, stakeholders with limited knowledge interact with other stakeholders who also have limited knowledge. Therefore, it illustrates both knowledge gap and dysconnectivity.
Managing infectious waste coming from households is essential not only for conducting safe waste management but also to address the global risk of infectious disease becoming the topmost likely risk to happen in the future. The importance of knowledge in generating the public awareness on involving in waste management. Therefore, to address the gap on knowledge among stakeholders, this study recommends the more intensive utilization of social media. Social media is among the top central stakeholders from the centrality analysis done through Social Network Analysis (SNA). Social media becomes more preferable source of information for households. Thus, it will be essential for the municipality to understand the effective use of social media by conducting relevant analysis on which social media is more preferable and the influencer/s who reach larger public. There are two possible ways of utilizing social media for knowledge dissemination: (1) through its own social media account; and (2) partnership with social media influencer. First, the municipality may increase its social media activation to reach a larger audience. The activation may be implemented by maintaining constant social media content, utilizing the interactive features of the social media, such as live video streaming and chat. Secondly, the municipality can establish partnership with prominent social media influencer for better knowledge dissemination. This kind of partnership may be conducted since the regulations accommodate it.
This study provided an overview of the non-technical aspects of household solid waste management in Pontianak, Indonesia, in the context of stakeholders’ involvement. This research is based on available scientific literature, relevant documents, and semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders. This study is built on the foundation of existing scientific literature, relevant documents, and semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders. It is hoped that this study will provide the useful insights and directions to the decision maker to enhance the implementation of solid waste management through the lens of the people. This study aims to provide essential insights and directions to decision-makers to improve the implementation of solid waste management through the lens of the stakeholders.
The findings of this study were obtained through stakeholder analysis and social network analysis on the stakeholders involved in overall household solid waste management in Pontianak municipality, Indonesia, highlighted as follow:
Recommendations were derived based on the identified concerns on waste management during the pandemic as well as policy gaps. Firstly, this study recommends strengthening of overall recycling practice through innovations initiated by multiple stakeholders. Secondly, this study recommends the implementation of infectious waste drop boxes managed by the environmental agency to address the immediate issue of increasing infectious waste during the pandemic and better manage the overall infectious waste after the pandemic. Lastly, as social media was identified as influential based on eigenvector centrality, this study suggests utilizing social media more intensively as a mean to disseminate knowledge regarding household solid waste management better. Those recommendations based on the policy gaps analysis can be input for local government to enhance waste management during pandemic and can be a data for forecasting future scenarios to prepare for future pandemic using proper waste management.
It is then essential to acknowledge this study's limitations and future scope. As this study focuses on the households as the entry point for solid waste management, other stakeholders should be identified. Thus, the future scope may broaden the scope of involved stakeholders to better depict the waste management system's complexity. Furthermore, the network analysis of this study was limited to the interactions among stakeholders. Therefore, further study may be conducted to include the network analysis information flow as well as communication channel better to comprehend overall knowledge transfer within a waste management system.
Conceptualization, Y.S.; methodology, Y.S.; analysis, Y.S.; investigation, Y.S.; writing—original draft preparation, A.; writing—review and editing, A. and R.S.; visualization, Y.S and A.; supervision, R.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscripts.
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of the paper.
The first (YS) author is thankful to the BAPPENAS-JICA, for the scholarship, the second (A) author is thankful to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, for the scholarship. The authors also acknowledge the support received from the ‘Environmental Design and Governance’ Program of Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Japan in conducting this study.
There is no funding for conducting this research.
BAPPEDA : Development Planning Agency of Pontianak Municipality
CBO : Community Based Organization
CE : Waste Collection Enterprise
COVID-19 : Corona Virus Disease 2019
CWCS : Community Waste Collection Service
DINKES : Health Agency of Pontianak Municipality
DISKOMINFO : Communication and Informatics Agency of Pontianak Municipality
DLH : Environmental Agency of Pontianak Municipality
DLH PPROV : Environmental Agency of West Kalimantan Provincial Government
DPUPR : Public Works and Spatial Planning Agency of Pontianak Municipality
HSWM : Household Solid Waste Management
MoEF : Ministry of Environment and Forestry
MoF : Ministry of Finance
MoH : Ministry of Health
MoPH : Ministry of Public Works and Housing
PDAM : Municipal Water Company owned by Pontianak Municipality
TPST : Integrated Waste Treatment Facility
3Rs : Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Appendix 2 Final list of stakeholders| Stakeholder Group | Stakeholders |
|---|---|
| Governmental Authorities | National Authorities |
| 1. Ministry of Environment (MoE) | |
| 2. Ministry of Health (MoH) | |
| 3. Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (MoPH) | |
| 4. Ministry of Finance (MoF) | |
| Provincial Authorities | |
| 5. West Kalimantan Environmental and Forestry Authority (DLH Prov) | |
| Local Authorities of Pontianak Municipality | |
| 6. Environmental Agency (DLH) | |
| 7. Health Agency (DINKES) | |
| 8. Public Works and Spatial Planning Agency (DPUPR) | |
| 9. Development Planning Agency (BAPPEDA) | |
| 10. Communication and Informatics Agency (DISKOMINFO) | |
| Private Sector | Private Informal Sector |
| 11. Waste Picker | |
| 12. Community Waste Collection Service (CWCS) | |
| 13. Itinerant waste buyers (IWB) | |
| Private Formal Sector | |
| 14. Waste Composting Enterprise (WCE) | |
| 15. Waste Collection Enterprise (CE) | |
| Service Users | 16. Household |
| 17. Household COVID-19 | |
| Academia | 18. Environmental Engineering major of Tanjungpura University, Pontianak (Academia) |
| Civil Society | 19. NGOs |
| 20. CBOs | |
| Media | 21. Local mass media |
| 22. Social media | |
| Other stakeholders | 23. Municipal Water Company (PDAM) |
| 24. Waste bank | |
| 25. Integrated Waste Treatment Facility (TPST) |
