One luxury that I think Singaporeans in Singapore and residents of Singapore have taken for granted is waste management.

Whether it is a Housing Development Board (HDB) block of flats, private condominium or landed property (i.e. bungalows, semi-detached, terraced houses), each household’s waste is collected daily.

Those living in HDB flats or condominiums throw waste down a chute, located either under the sink in each home or at the communal lobby on each floor. Those staying on landed property store their bagged garbage in a huge plastic bin and place the latter outside the gate. The garbage in both cases is collected by a huge truck every morning and brought to a waste processing centre where recyclables such as metal and glass are seperated from the trash before the latter is burned in an incinerator, and the ashes used as landfill.

I thought that there is no such luxury in Bali, as witnessed in my previous entry about this issue. However, I have recently discovered that there are several companies in the recycling and waste management business on the island.

Yet, our very first experience with a supposed waste management company was anything but clean (pardon the pun) cut.

Let me backtrack a little in describing my search for a waste management company that operates in the area where we live, Jimbaran.

It seemed that there was none, and the only city in Bali that had a proper waste management system was Ubud. Now the distance between Jimbaran and Ubud is an hour and 15 minutes during good traffic conditions, and about two hours during bad traffic conditions. The journey time is also dependent on the speed of the vehicle.

Thus there was no way was the company going to send a truck from Ubud to Jimbaran just to collect trash from one household. It just did not make economic sense.

However, some time last December or this January, I chanced upon an article in a local property guide about a waste management company called Jimbaran Lestari Waste, operating exclusively in the Jimbaran area. The only hurdle to engaging the services of the company was that there were no contact details of the company included in the article. A search on the Internet turned up one other article, which also had no contact details of the company.

It seemed that my search for a waste management company had come to a dead end.

Then in March, just a few weeks before I was due to deliver Antonio, I came across a brochure of ecoBali while shopping at the imported produce specialty store, Dijon. A quick call and some emails to the company put me in contact with an Italian lady, Paola, who seemed to be either a manager or one of the directors.

As the company already had a client in the Jimbaran area, it was then agreed between us that ecoBali would begin managing our waste once we had domestic help around the house. Our domestic help arrived on April 23, and a staff from ecoBali arrived the following Tuesday April 29 with two bags and instructions for our domestic help on disposing waste, which was to be collected every Thursday beginning from May 1.

This weekly service stretched over six-months cost us Rp480,000 (about S$70) for six months, with an additional complimentary week of collection. The S.O. and I happily paid the entire amount, thinking that through this, at least we no longer contribute to harming the environment.

However, this was a period of time when Antonio had just arrived. So I was a new mother going through post-partum and recovering from surgery, and did not have the time or energy to follow up with our domestic help on how the waste was being collected, until after the first collection.

It was then that I discovered, to my surprise, that collection was only for paper in one bag, and another bag for glass, plastic and metal. While anything that can be decomposed can be made in to compost for the garden, items such as batteries, disposable diapers, sanitary napkins, breast pads and used napkins/tissue were not collected.

This did not make utter sense to me, as my purpose of engaging a waste management company was so that our household would not continue contributing to the blatant dumping and burning of trash in the empty land directly across from our house. Each time trash is burned, whether by our neighbours or by our domestic help, we suffer the bulk of the poisonous fumes emitted.

If only recycables are collected, and if I do not wish to burn non-recycables that cannot decompose, am I supposed to leave them to pile up in my home compound?

An email to ecoBali highlighting this problem resulted in a reply from Paola indicating that if the staff are told during collection to take the bags containing soiled diapers/sanitary napkins etc, they will take the bags.

This went well at the second collection on May 8, but the staff did not take the bags at the third collection on May 15.

At this point, by some coincidence, the S.O. met the people behind Jimbaran Lestari Waste and we discovered that they had been granted permission by the mayor (not sure whether it is of Bali or Jimbaran) to collect all types of waste – including non-recycables and non-decomposable waste – from all households in Jimbaran. They planned to do so every day, where possible, for a small monthly fee of Rp10,000 (about S$1.45) per household. Yet before they could begin proper operations, they had to await approval from the village council.

With this news, we informed ecoBali that we would like to terminate the service after the last collection of the month, which would be on May 29.

On May 22, the next collection date, we faced a small problem with ecoBali’s collection time of between 4pm to 5pm: the S.O. had meetings at the office for the whole day; I had an acupuncture treatment in the afternoon; our domestic help would be returning to her village at 3pm for two days as there was a Hindu ceremony she could not miss.

Thus, we tried co-ordinating with the company for the possibility of the collection to happen by 1pm, as I wanted to ensure that they collected the bags of soiled diapers/sanitary napkins etc. After a few phone calls, they declared that collection for Jimbaran area would be changed to Saturdays, and so they would not be collecting on May 22 but on May 24 instead.

So we all happily went about with whatever we had to do. Yet when I arrived home around 6pm on May 22, I noticed that the two bags for paper and plastic/glass/metal had been collected, but not any others.

At this point, I was quite frustrated and irritated with the entire situation. Did this mean that since collection had been done on Thursday, there would be no collection done on Saturday May 24?

The answer to this question arrived on the morning of May 24, when a staff of ecoBali came to collect back the two bags, and refund the entire amount we had paid for the service. Up until the end, the staff refused to take the soiled diapers/sanitary napkins etc, even after we told them that Paola had said they would take it.

Having lived in Bali for a year, we learned that the best solution for dealing with the locals in such situations is to not argue. After all, we had already decided to stop the service and thus did not wish to pursue the matter.

Yet, for a service that is (as I suppose) managed by expatriates who have experience in waste management, the company does not effectively address and rectify the waste problem by collecting only recycables. This act only seems to transmit the message that the company is concerned about trash that can bring them back some cash, and not with trash that is deemed worthless.

We do know that there is money to be made in trash, but if the main driving force for establishing a supposed waste management company, then the people behind this company is definitely doing more harm than good to everyone.

I urge residents of Bali to keep this in mind when they next decide on engaging the services of a waste management company for their household or company.

To support Jimbaran Lestari in their work, or just to find out more information, check out their website: http://jimbaranlestari.com/english/home.php.

So we had a small party yesterday at our house in Bali to celebrate Antonio turning one-month on May 19.

We pitched a small marquee somewhere in our garden; placed speakers connected to an iPod Touch and let the music flowed; started a barbecue at the grill; catered some food; rented some plastic garden chairs, and invited some friends over.

The party was also a mini house-warming, for we had recently completed refurbishing and renovating various parts of the house.

It was lovely to have friends at the house, cuddling Antonio and bringing cheer to the place.

Hopefully we will have more of such parties in future. Perhaps we should begin making a list of occasions that we can mark in such a way!

This post is a branch from the one on Baby Capodieci’s arrival and about the unpleasant incident at the Ari Canti hospital in Mas of Ubud in the Gianyar regency of Bali in Indonesia.

However, I do realise that even though I experienced the following incident in Bali, this could easily happen in any hospital in the world, as long as there are pharmaceutical or baby product companies trying to part parents/patients with their money for something that the parents/patients do not necessarily need.

It all began from after the surgery when I was wheeled in to the recovery room. A female nurse* had walked in with a large white plastic bag of stuff, saying that it was for me and asked Roberto to sign a receipt for it.

Roberto asked whether the things in the bag were included in the room package, and the reply was “yes”. Knowing that some times the locals say yes even though they did not understand the question, he asked this time whether the things were gratis, or free in Bahasa Indonesia. Again, the answer was in the affirmative so he signed the receipt.

I was too exhausted from the long labour, immobile from the pain of the stitches and a catheter stuck up me, and distracted by baby’s needs so I did not ask to take a look at what he was signing.

Throughout the next day, Sunday Apr 20, Roberto would sign for various things that were administered to me, including medication. This was without my knowledge as I was either sleeping or attending to baby.

In the early afternoon, a female nurse came in with the record of baby’s birth, a framed photograph that their PR personnel had earlier taken of baby, and a bag that the nurse explicitly said was “present from the hospital”. Everything was placed on one of the two couches in the room.

I was only able to look in to the ‘gift’ bag in the early evening, after the catheter had been removed and I could slowly make my way around the room.

In the bag was a box of Wyeth baby formula milk (manufactured in Singapore!); alcohol disinfectant; a roll of bandage; a very small bottle of Betadine antiseptic liquid, and cotton buds.

I showed the contents of the bag to Roberto and told him that we should leave the box of baby formula milk behind since we have no need for it, and I would not give it to anyone else as I did not believe in feeding any baby formula milk unless absolutely necessary (i.e. the mother has insufficient breast milk or is unable to breast feed for health reasons).

It was also around this time that two nurses came in to take my blood pressure, measure my body temperature and administer the evening dosage of medicine to be taken after meals.

This was when I noticed that Roberto had to sign yet another receipt. When I asked what he had signed for, he said for the medication that I was given.

For some reason, I decided to ask him what he has been signing for. His reply was “Everything that they have been giving you since yesterday.”

Alarm bells went off, and I asked to see the receipts. Some items, such as surgery and medication used for the surgery were counted in to the room charge (we would learn later that any mother brought from Yayasan Bumi Sehat to the hospital was not charged surgery or surgeon’s fees, due to a standing agreement between this particular surgeon and Robin).

However, others such as the large white plastic bag of stuff and the ‘gift’ bag were additional charges.

I looked in to the plastic bag and besides my daily oral medication, I found four 500ml clear plastic bottles of some clear solution that was still unopened and had not been administered on me in any way. Yet the charge for these four bottles was about a third of the entire bag of contents.

A look at the receipt for the ‘gift’ bag showed that cost of the box of infant formula milk was more than half of the total amount.

You can imagine how angry I felt! Why should I pay for something that the hospital staff had told me was a present, and also for an item – baby formula milk – that I would not use?

I brought these to Roberto’s attention and he decided that the best solution would be to have his PA speak to the staff the next day.

Thus on Monday Apr 21, I gave all the receipts that Roberto had signed for to Ida and asked her to check. True enough, we were being charged for the four bottles of unused solution (we later found out it was supposed to be for the drip but that was removed even before more solution was required), and the supposed ‘gift’ bag.

Ida was then instructed to tell the hospital that these should be removed from the final bill as they were all untouched and we did not require them. We returned the five items to a nurse, who promised that they would be removed from the bill.

When it was time for payment, Roberto and Ida had a difficult time trying to explain things to the accounting and administrative staff, as we were charged an additional day in the room, which was stretched unnecessarily due to the long wait for the surgeon’s arrival to check me before he cleared me for discharge from the hospital. A phone call to the surgeon resulted in a Rp 250,000 (approx. S$36.75) discount for the one-day stay in the room, after Roberto told the surgeon that whatever amount that is discounted will be donated to Yayasan Bumi Sehat.

Our final bill for the stay came up to slightly over Rp 7 million S$(1,028.55) for a one day and one night stay in the VIP room, and I am still not sure what has eventually been charged or not charged.

I thought this was the last of the episode. Until Ida received a call from Wyeth a couple of days later.

The smart girl had given the hospital her work handphone number, so that they could contact her when necessary. The hospital had then given her number to the Wyeth representative who called to asked whether I received the box of infant formula milk. When told that I had refused to take the box as my breast milk was coming out fine, the representative could only wish me well.

The whole incident left a bad taste in our mouths mainly for how the hospital and Wyeth operated. It is one thing to charge patients for items that they really require, such as medication and items/products used for a necessary surgery. However, it is another to say that something is complimentary, then charge for it.

Roberto and I had previously heard about how the hospital staff here receive kick backs for successfully making new mothers accept the infant formula milk, but had not personally experienced how this would have been done without the mother’s knowledge. Now we know!

If this is the case, then the hospital is earning twice – once from the infant formula milk manufacturer (in this case, Ari Canti would be getting benefits from Wyeth) and another time from charging the new mother for the infant formula milk.

We are not sure if this practice is prevalent in hospitals in other parts of the world, but we believe it is happening as there is a lot of money to be made in convincing people that need to have something that they do not necessarily need (much like having a 36-inch plasma flat-screen television at home, or a luxury car like an Audi).

Overall, this is yet another incident that reinforces my thinking that I will not go to a hospital unless absolutely necessary.

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* The term ‘nurse’ is used loosely as I have no idea whether these female and male staff really underwent proper nursing school before they started work at the hospital. Things such as checking body temperature, blood pressure and administering medication according to doctor’s indication can easily be learned without going to nursing school.