Makassar's mandatory waste sorting rule takes effect August 1 as TPA Tamangapa nears capacity

A four day countdown to a stricter rule

Households, offices, hotels, and businesses across Makassar have four days left to get used to a new habit. Starting 1 August 2026, the city's environmental agency, Dinas Lingkungan Hidup (DLH) Makassar, will enforce a rule that has been building since the start of July: only residual waste, the material left over after organic and recyclable inorganic waste has been separated out, will be accepted at TPA Tamangapa, the city's main landfill in the Antang area.

DLH head Helmy Budiman set out the shift plainly on Tuesday, 21 July 2026. "Mulai 1 Agustus 2026 Pemerintah Kota Makassar menerapkan sistem controlled landfill sebagai bagian dari upaya menghentikan praktik open dumping secara bertahap," he said, describing the move to a controlled landfill system as part of a phased effort to end open dumping. "Masyarakat diwajibkan memilah sampah sejak dari sumbernya, baik di rumah, kantor, hotel maupun tempat usaha," he added, making clear the obligation to sort at the source applies to homes, offices, hotels, and business premises alike.

Under the new system, waste is separated into three categories before it ever reaches a collection point: organic material such as food scraps, fruit peels, and garden trimmings; inorganic recyclables such as plastic, paper, metal, and glass; and residual waste, the genuinely unusable remainder such as soiled diapers and contaminated packaging. Only that last category is meant to travel to TPA Tamangapa. Enforcement will be phased through a local regulation task force, Satgas Penegakan Perda Persampahan, with collection crews authorised to leave unsorted household waste uncollected rather than transport it to the landfill, according to reporting from SulawesiPos and several other Makassar outlets on the mechanism.

Why TPA Tamangapa cannot keep absorbing everything

The urgency behind the deadline is visible in the numbers DLH itself has published. Organic material makes up roughly 54 percent of what currently arrives at TPA Tamangapa, according to Helmy Budiman's account to Detik Sulsel and RRI, and it is precisely that fraction, wet, quick to decompose, and prone to compacting, that generates the bulk of the site's methane emissions and leachate, the contaminated liquid that can seep into surrounding soil and waterways. A landfill built to absorb decades of mixed waste on a fixed footprint eventually runs out of room for material that could have been composted, sold to a recycler, or processed at the household level instead.

DLH's stated target is to cut the volume reaching the landfill by more than half through source level sorting, a goal first laid out by Aswin Harun, the agency's head of waste and hazardous materials management, when the pilot phase launched on 1 July 2026 in Kelurahan Panambungan, Kecamatan Mariso. The logic is straightforward: organic waste processed into compost, animal feed, or black soldier fly larvae for the aquaculture and livestock trade never needs to make the trip to Antang at all, and inorganic recyclables routed to a waste bank retain resale value that a landfill destroys.

The financial context reinforces why the city is leaning on sorting rather than expansion. Helmy Budiman has told local media that an adequately funded waste management operation would need roughly Rp250 billion a year, close to 3 percent of the municipal budget, while TPA Antang currently receives closer to Rp10 billion. That gap has left ageing equipment, including several excavators, out of service at points this year. Reducing the tonnage that needs mechanical handling at the landfill is, in that light, as much a budget strategy as an environmental one, buying time and capacity while the city makes the case for greater investment.

Building the system before enforcing it

Makassar's approach has been to build capacity in stages rather than announce a deadline and leave residents to work out the details. The pilot that began on 1 July 2026 covers 15 kecamatan, with DLH planning to extend household level sorting infrastructure toward the city's roughly 400 kelurahan over time. A central waste bank, Bank Sampah Pusat, has been set up to purchase both recyclable inorganic material and processed organic outputs such as compost and maggot harvests from residents, giving households a direct incentive to sort rather than treating the rule as an unfunded obligation.

Community outreach has continued in the days immediately before the deadline. On the evening of Sunday, 26 July 2026, residents of the Taman Griya Antang Harapan housing complex in Kelurahan Tamangapa, Kecamatan Manggala, took part in an organic and inorganic sorting education session led by Ahmad Tholib, who heads the city's waste sorting management effort, according to Berita Kota Makassar. Sessions of this kind, run neighbourhood by neighbourhood in the run up to 1 August, are DLH's main tool for making sure the rule change does not simply arrive as a surprise.

"Ke depan, kita harus beralih ke sistem sanitary landfill, di mana hanya residu yang masuk ke TPA," said Helmy Budiman, describing the longer term direction toward a sanitary landfill that accepts only true residual waste.

A council pushing for readiness, not resistance

Makassar's city council has used its oversight role in the run up to the deadline to press for stronger preparation, a normal and constructive part of how the policy is being tested before it takes full effect. Azwar Rasmin, chair of Commission C at the Makassar DPRD, raised the concern directly with DLH during a monitoring session reported on 23 July 2026.

"Kalau pemerintah mewajibkan masyarakat memilah sampah, seharusnya pemerintah juga menyediakan tempat sampahnya," Azwar said, arguing that a mandate to sort waste should come paired with government provided sorting bins, rather than leaving households to find their own.

Azwar's broader point, echoed by other council members including from the Nasdem faction, was about sequencing rather than substance: none of the councillors quoted have argued against sorting as a policy, only that facilities and outreach in some neighbourhoods, particularly access to sorting bins at the RT and RW level, still need to catch up before enforcement bites. DLH's response has been to keep running education sessions such as the one in Manggala on 26 July, and to describe enforcement itself as phased, starting with education before any service suspension is applied. That combination, an active legislature flagging implementation gaps and an agency responding with more outreach rather than a fixed rollout regardless of readiness, is closer to a system correcting itself in real time than a policy running into trouble.

Sirkularium's view

Makassar's transition offers a useful reference point for other Indonesian cities working against the same national deadline to end open dumping. The sequencing matters: a phased pilot across 15 districts, a dedicated waste bank to give sorting real economic value, and weekly neighbourhood education sessions were all in motion before the enforcement date was set, rather than being announced alongside it. That ordering gives residents a reason to comply beyond the threat of an uncollected bin, and it gives the city time to find and fix gaps, such as the sorting bin shortages Commission C has flagged, before the rule is judged a success or failure.

The financing gap DLH has been candid about, an estimated Rp250 billion in ideal annual need against roughly Rp10 billion currently reaching TPA Antang, is worth other regional governments watching closely. Source level sorting is, among other things, a way to make a constrained waste budget go further by keeping compostable and recyclable material out of the most expensive part of the system, landfill transport and mechanical handling. For provincial and national policymakers supporting the broader open dumping deadline, Makassar's experience suggests that pairing an enforcement date with visible, funded upstream infrastructure, and treating council scrutiny as a readiness check rather than an obstacle, gives a mandatory sorting rule a genuine chance of holding once August arrives.