Green Energy Approach for Batik Industry in Order to Increase Productivity and Maintain a Healthy Environment

Abstract

Batik is a piece of cloth applied by means of a dye-resist technique using “batik-wax” as the resisting medium. Indonesian batik was designated by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. As part of the acknowledgment, UNESCO insisted that Indonesia has preserved their heritage. This fact should be grateful and responded with efforts to develop and preserve Indonesian batik. One effort to develop and preserve Indonesian batik is to adopt green energy technologies in the production process. As generally in Indonesia, batik industry is currently still a class of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). One of the quite popular in Indonesia is Bantul batik. Of the many batik SMEs in Bantul, there are two SMEs that have the potential to develop, namely Ida Lestari Batik and Arjo Munir Batik. The issue of the SMEs is that the production process is still using kerosene stoves, while the price of kerosene is very expensive and difficult to obtain. Therefore, in this paper the application of environmentally friendly energy sources for the production process of batik is described. The energy source is the installation of solar home system. The system is used to distribute electrical power to the batik electric stove. The use of solar home system and batik electric stoves is more practical and economical than kerosene stove. Another advantage is to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and help preserve the environment with the use of green technology.