The Jakarta Post - Weekender

If you’re one of these people who religiously store away their copy of the Weekender once they’ve read it, hardly print out anything, or rarely read the news except off your computer screen (the pain…), then you can safely skip this column and meet me again next month. But I’m going to take a wild guess here and assume that at home, at work, or even in your bathroom, your paper diet and disposal isn’t exactly forest-friendly. Time for a paper makeover, I say.

Not far away from us, native forests are being gnawed away to make room for plantations of fast-growing trees so that we get to meet our paper needs: newspapers, magazines, toilet paper, tissues, copy paper and countless derivatives that rely on paper pulp. According to WWF, about 270,000 trees are flushed down the drain or end up as garbage all over the world – every day. It’s not just the forests that get wiped out. For some native peoples and endangered wildlife, forests are an irreplaceable home. With forests gone, their tenants just disappear, replaced by monoculture plantations that are a poor reflection of the area’s former diversity. Processing pulp and paper also consumes vast amounts of energy and releases a wide range of polluting compounds into the environment, including chlorine. And in these times of climate change, can we fail to mention that converting native forests to plantations often releases carbon dioxide that contributes to climate change?

It’s this sorry state of green affairs that makes me take a hard, second look at my printer. Every time a blank sheet slides into the device and starts getting pummeled by jets of ink, I feel as if I’m pushing a Sumatran forest and its’ assorted diversity (Orang Rimba people and tigers included) down a shredder. So how exactly how does one get started on this paper makeover?

On the sourcing side, you might start by purchasing recycled copy paper, rather than using products from say, Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), too often under the media spotlight for its excesses in rampant deforestation. Since 2007, you can get 100% post-consumer waste copy paper from Jakarta-based Equinox Publishing at Aksara bookstores and from http://www.equinoxpaper.com/. At work, how about some paper economy? You might get called cheap for using both sides of a sheet of paper, but hey, that’s a 50% reduction in paper consumption and you’re cutting waste while saving on company expenses (your management should be singing praises).

Moving on, your discarded paper need not end up soaking waste at the bottom of the trash bag; your Jakarta Post back-issues are entitled to a second life, thanks to people such as Pak Salam in Central Jakarta. This fervent advocate of recycling will turn your paper into pulp and bring it back to life as a wedding invitation, decorative paper or business cards, and there’s always more demand for raw material. And if your recycling idealism is not quite high enough for you to bring your waste paper to Pak Salam’s place, bear in mind that the trash pickers (pemulung) in your neighborhood may do the work for you, sorting paper from your waste and selling it to recycling facilities around Jakarta.

As far as makeovers go, this one might not leave you looking sexier or with a rejuvenated living-room. But it will certainly make a difference for forests and the landfills of Indonesia. And for that, you’re entitled to a few brownie points.

Random Non Sequiturs
1. When a man turns 20, it's very important that he never uses more than two exclamation marks per email.

2. Rn'B and Sushi Groove: What to listen to when you don't actually like music, where to go when you don't actually like sushi. But would like to pretend as if you do.

3. I think the real reason why Indonesians do Pre-Wedding photography is because they realize how horrible and stressed-out they will look on the wedding day itself.

4. The slower paced a movie, the better the reviews. Throw in a healthy dose of navel-gazing and voila’, ... you got yourself an Oscar.

5. You know you are an Indonesian fashion designer if you have someone hand you a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of flowers when you do your kegirangan victory lap at the end of your show.

6. Never trust a man who smells of Drakkar Noir. Especially if he wears gold chains and has chest hair.

7. You know you're a "Bule with a Mission" when you find it necessary to make a point that you have a favorite Indonesian band. And to make sure everyone knows about it, so help you God.*

8. Never button the lowest button on your suit jacket. And if you think it's okay to leave the label stitched on the sleeve... well, we're not even gonna go there, are we?

9. Live in Jakarta once in your life. Leave before you find it perfectly acceptable to ship your Harley Davidson by truck so you can ride it in a convoy in Bali.

10. The other day I was watching a documentary on aircraft carriers on the Discovery channel. On the early carriers, aircrafts would land on the flight deck parallel to the long axis of the ship's hull, and park at the end of the runway. If a jet overshot its landing, it would crash into the parked aircrafts. It took a decade of fiery deaths before someone finally came up with the idea of an angled runway, so the landing jet would not hit the parked aircrafts and simply go airborne again. Keep this in mind the next time you have the urge to beat yourself silly over a mistake you have made.

11. If you cannot be happy on your own, you will never be happy with someone else.

12. When you ask someone what his favorite movies are and he answers with names of directors instead of movie titles, its his way of saying "I am hipper than thou, you puny pedestrian scum."*

13. Either that, or he works in advertising. Same difference.

14. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll ask you to pay for the sewa lapak and some uang rokok.*

15. Yes, I do consider riding an ojek during rush hour in Mangga Dua to be an extreme sport. How I have managed to keep both of my kneecaps intact is beyond me.

16. The smaller her dog, the more emotionally fragile she is.

17. When my parents were struggling immigrants in the '60s, all we could afford were the cheapest cuts of a chicken, namely the backs and necks. For the longest time we thought that was all a chicken consisted of, until we saw KFC commercials on TV with slow-motion tumbling pieces of drumsticks, wings, and breasts. My sister and brother said “Hey.... hold on... what part of a chicken is that?”

18. When a man turns 25, he should refrain from dating women who have an aversion to DVDs with laurel wreaths on its cover. Regardless of how much of a hot babe she might be.

19. Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes with her arms folded.

20. The worse the spelling, the higher the probability he was educated in the U.S. Definately. *

+ Adrian Darmono

Home