YOGYAKARTA – Persistence and consistency in dedicating most of his time for environment preservation have brought a lecturer in Engineering Faculty UGM, Prof. Dr. Ir. Sunjoto, Dip.HE, DEA, the Satyalencana award for Environment 2013. The award is presented by Vice-President Boediono in the Vice-Presidential palace on Thursday (28/11).
Speaking on the phone, Sunjoto expressed his pride after receiving the award. It encourages and motivate himself to continue the effort in preserving the environment. One of the ways is by promoting water conservation that he had long introduced to society and policy makers.
Asked about his role in this environment conservation, the man born in Magetan, 66 years ago, said over 20 years he had developed methods for environment improvement which are simple, easy and reliable through scientific computations. The four methods he developed are: prevention of water deficit, seawater intrusion, and water body pollution, and energy saving.
It is interesting though that Sunjoto did not register his finding for a patent as he has dedicated it for environment development. “I have purposedly not registered this for a patent, because I want to contribute it to the environment in Indonesia and even the world,” he said.
The method and formula for computation of water conservation for absorbent wells have been made since 1988. The finding provides the rationale that can illustrate the real condition of the nature and as a result, it gets more efficient with this methods and formula compared to similar ones that are developed in the U.S., Australia, Japan, Malaysia and European countries. “As an illustration, the construction computed with this method has produced a dimension of rainwater absorbent wells that by other methods can only produce a half or a third of it,” said Sunjoto.
Sunjoto added one of his findings to prevent water deficit is through rainwater conservation by artificial recharge that aims at maintaining groundwater surface and supplies. The supply will be able to fulfill household demands. So, with absorbent system, all rainwater that falls on the ground on which a well construction is built will add to the groundwater supplies the amount of which is demanded by the people living on that area.
On coastal areas, such wells can even remove the remnants of seawater intrusion by 20%,” he affirmed.
To prevent pollution of water body, Sunjoto said his finding does this by modifying waste water stream. It is also cheaper as it is designed to manage not only black water but also grey water such as that from the kitchen and toilette.