KARAWANG, Around 400 bamboo seedlings were planted in Tanjungmekar Village, West Karawang District, Friday (28/8). Planting is carried out along the Citarum Sector 19 watershed (DAS), which is one of the flood-prone areas. “Last February 25, when I sat here it was suffocating, until I almost wanted to go up to the street, the trees were about to run out,” said Tanjungmekar Village Head Ahmad Ridwan at the Citarum Task Force Educational Park Sector 19.

Budhi Kristianto said that planting bamboo as a counterbalance to air pollution circulation

Ridwan appreciated PT Patra Drilling Contractor (Pertamina PDC) who took the initiative to donate bamboo seedlings. According to him, apart from being a differentiator from existing plants, bamboo is also quite effective in preventing flooding. He hopes that with the help of the bamboo in the future it can be developed again. The plan is that some of the seeds will be cultivated first so that more will be planted.

PT PDC’s Corporate Secretary, Budhi Kristianto, said that this bamboo planting started from the fact that Jakarta is the second city in the world as the largest air pollutant. Pollution from vehicles seems to be the main contributor to pollution, including the vehicles used by thousands of PT PDC workers. Realizing this, bamboo planting is done as a form of environmental responsibility. “PDC has calculated the pollutants produced by workers and then converted it into the action of planting 2 kilometers of bamboo trees in the Citarum Watershed (DAS),” he said.

According to Budhi, the bamboo plant was chosen because of its high carbon dioxide absorption capacity. This is because bamboo has the ability of efficient photosynthesis, which is to reabsorb some of the carbon dioxide produced.