Socio-Economic Considerations of Converting Food Waste into Biogas on a Household Level in Indonesia: The Case of the City of Bandung

Household waste is a serious environmental problem in Indonesia, especially in urban areas. Since 2010, biogas production from food waste has been introduced to reduce waste and provided an alternative to liquid petroleum gas (LPG) as cooking fuel in a pilot project in Bandung. Although the produced biogas is sufficient, the socio-economic aspects can hinder application. This study assesses the socio-economic feasibility of the project in Cibangkong, a typical urban area in Bandung, which includes four bio-digesters. The results show that the conversion of food waste into biogas is currently not economically feasible, mainly due to the low penetration of bio-slurry—a by-product commonly used for fertilizer—into local fertilizer supply-chains. From a social perspective, community acceptance is mainly influenced by procedural justice. Furthermore, while the produced biogas is perceived to be quite useful in substituting LPG, it has not yet been fully utilized due to low bio gas pressure and several technical failures, which in turn influence community acceptance of the digesters. It is thus concluded that introducing biogas production from waste to improve waste management and reduce LPG consumption can be feasible when efforts to support the market uptake of bio-slurry, enhance biogas utilization, and improve procedural justice performance, are taken.