Students from the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) at the Universitas Indonesia (UI) have once again made a national achievement. Bayu Pratama Tarigan and Emilia Pandin Madao, Master’s students in the Public Health Science Study Program, won an achievement in the 2023 National Health Competition, as 1st Place in the Essay Category in the Public Health Master’s Education Category. The 2023 National Health Competition is a series of National Public Health Seminar activities organized by the Environmental Health Department, FPH Airlangga University on 19 October 2023 in a hybrid manner (Harris Hotel & Convention Gubeng, Surabaya and Zoom Meeting) with the theme “Global Public Health and Climate: Optimize Preventive & Promotive Efforts in Supporting SDGs”.
This essay competition has 8 sub-themes with the sub-theme “Youth’s Ideas on Protecting Earth to Improve Community Health based on Environmental Health Perspective” being the choice of Bayu and Emilia to be featured in their writing. The United Nations (UN) initiated Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which relate to the relationship between public health and the environment in two ways, namely responsible consumption and production and handling climate change. Waste can be a source of greenhouse gas emissions so that improper waste management will cause climate change. The mounting accumulation of waste, both at TPS and TPA, causes overload conditions, especially at Cipayung TPA, Depok City. Currently, there is only one landfill in Depok City, with the community’s behavior still high in the use of single-use items and waste that is not sorted according to type.
In fact, waste that is properly sorted according to its type can be easily reused by parties who need it, for example used paper which can be reprocessed and used as raw material in the paper processing industry. Bayu and Emilia are trying to come up with a solution or innovation that is expected to help the Depok City Government in solving waste management problems, protecting the earth, and improving the level of public health based on an environmental health perspective. The idea put forward is the creation of the ASIK Program (Depok Integrated Waste Platform) as a solution and innovation for waste management in Depok City.
The concept of innovation being proposed is creating an Android-based application where the application is used to track or find the location of an integrated waste storage machine that can accommodate various types of inorganic waste. The types of storage machines that need to be prepared include machines for storing plastic waste, canned waste, electronic waste (e-waste), paper and cardboard waste and waste for storing used clothes or used cloth.
This machine will weigh the amount of waste according to its type, then the machine will store the collected waste and carry out calculations and conversion of the weight of the collected waste into points. These points will then be accumulated again in your account so that they can then be converted into money which can be sent via the bank account registered on the account.
“When we wrote this essay, we always said to ourselves that the results will not betray the process, whatever the results are, that’s a matter for later. “We want to actively contribute to providing solutions to environmental problems,” said Bayu. When faced with conditions that hindered the process of writing this essay, they encouraged each other until they finally succeeded in completing it. “Motivation to develop our writing and critical thinking skills encouraged us to take part in this competition. “It’s not winning or losing that is the main point but our process in writing this essay,” added Emilia.
The ideas outlined in the essay come from the idea of solving environmental problems in the surrounding area first (Depok) and it is hoped that the innovations provided after being implemented in Depok can be implemented throughout Indonesia. (Bayu)