By Eden Boyd, Gracie Richter and Marisa Kuhlewein
“I love my country very much, but we have a big problem with the trash. We are all responsible for this world,” says the founder of environmental group Malu Dong, who goes under the name of BMO.
When paddling out into the pristine blue waters of Australia, it’s difficult to imagine that every year around 12.7 million tonnes of plastic pollution reach the ocean. The second highest ocean polluter after China is Indonesia, which comes as no surprise to the packs of tourists visiting Bali who have seen surfers navigating waves littered with trash.
Out of sight, out of mind might work for the western world when it comes to garbage, but in Bali the waste crisis can’t be ignored any longer.
The issue in Bali “has to change - it can’t go on as it is”, says Massey University senior lecturer Dr Graeme MacRae.
“It has gotten worse because of production and consumption, especially since plastic packaging has increased.”
While there has been a range of initiatives to combat the problem “they are swimming against the tide,” he says.
A handful of changemakers are successfully turning the tide and are overcoming limitations of infrastructure, education and planning to revolutionise trash talk in Bali. Keeping Bali beautiful at the forefront of their minds, these key crusaders are doing their part to help overcome the problem.
“You should be ashamed of littering.”
Malu Dong translates as ‘Just Ashamed’, and its logo, blazoned across t-shirts, flags, posters and bins, is changing the stigma of waste in Bali.
After spending time abroad in Australia and America, Nyoman BMO, fondly known as BMO, realised his beaches back home littered in waste were not up to scratch.
He saw there was a different attitude towards waste in Bali. A solution of just providing more bins and opportunities to recycle wasn’t going to change the issue. A change of attitude was needed.
“People who aren’t educated about the issue of waste don’t care where their trash ends up,” he says.
Creating the Malu Dong Community has enabled BMO and his activist team to empower the youth through educational programs in schools.
“We need to make it part of the culture,” he says.
Since 2009, BMO has made it his mission to salvage the wreckage of the waste crisis. Malu Dong has brought its programme into more than 1000 schools, and conducted regular beach clean ups to encourage children to act responsibly with trash and take an active part in keeping the island clean.
“Schools are the starting point to educate the next generation,” BMO says. “People learn more through action. Malu Dong teaches kids through doing, action and not just theory.”
Eco Treehouse Learning
Another initiative in changing the mindset of children can be found hidden between Balinese rainforests and the Ayung River. A school made almost entirely of bamboo, proving that innovation does not always equal technology.
In its tenth year of operation, the Green School, close to the cultural centre of Ubud, is an international private school aiming to create a global community of leaders who are passionate about our planet.
Without leaving out traditional subjects such as maths and literature, the school educates preschool to high school aged students about sustainable practices through a more holistic, hands-on experience.
Head of Middle School Bill Sal Gordon not only sees the improvement in learning of his students in his own classes, but of his children too who attend the school.
“Your kids become real warriors of the earth. Part of that is them understanding that they can do something, that they don’t have to wait until an adult changes things.”
His children have become the plastic police in their household, he says, with the rubbish being “more in their faces” as opposed to living in Australia.
The Green School aims to inspire their students, not scare them into caring about the waste in Bali.
“The better way to teach about sustainability is just how amazing the planet is and how beautiful it can be,” Bill says. “Then you give them skills and they just want to protect the planet.”
Bali’s first Plastic Bank
Caught by the tower of bags filled with plastic waste, Balinese local Ni Wayan Suciati approaches the Plastic Bank collection centre with curiosity.
She didn’t know she could exchange her plastics for money, items or Blockchain tokens at the newly opened location in Sanur in Bali’s southeast.
Plastic Bank is an organisation dedicated to solving the waste emergency that currently taints Bali by enabling their customers to trade trash for cash. The platform has been successful in Haiti, Brazil and the Philippines.
The company views plastic waste as a commodity. In the same way customers receive incentives for disposing of their plastics responsibly, Plastic Bank sells the collection to packaging companies that need recyclables.
The Bali Development Manager for Plastic Waste, Wisakananda Pradipta, a past intern for the Green School, says the value of plastic waste can be equated to harvesting an acre of diamonds.
“If you don’t have anywhere to sell your diamonds, they’re useless. That’s the same as plastic, and that’s what Plastic Bank has created.”
Plastic Bank staff considers their approach to be a root cause solution to the waste crisis. The majority of plastic waste polluting the Balinese shores flows down from the river, Wisakananda says, not from the ocean itself.
The quick fix option of beach clean ups is therefore not an effective long term solution, says Wisakananda. Although he recognizes the efforts of volunteers who rake Bali’s beaches clean of plastic waste and their impact on increasing awareness of the issue, it is not stopping the problem at the source.
“You’re in the kitchen and your sink is broken. You have two options: to turn off the tap and fix the pipe first, or to clean the kitchen.” Wisakananda compares this to the waste emergency in Bali. “We have to stop it coming to the ocean first,” he says.
Trash Tech to the people
Gringgo is making waste collection smarter, combining technology and data to create trash collection services that are reliable, affordable and greener.
“We know from our survey in Denpasar from a year and a half ago, less than half the city has any waste services. Eighty percent of the plastic that ends up in the ocean is coming from land, so if you want to deal with stopping the ocean plastic problem, you have to stop it at the source,” Olivier Pouillon, Gringgo CEO and co-founder says.
The trash tech company leverages data, mobile and web applications to improve the informal processes of waste collection that exist in Bali. “People are responsible for a big problem like day to day collection. It’s not conducted by the government,” Olivier explains.
In order to stop illegal dumping and burning, Gringgo provides infrastructure to make it easy for locals in Bali’s capital city to do the right thing with their rubbish. Gringgo staff have created a phone application to provide basic information to residents about where they can bring their waste and where tipping locations are.
“Any citizen can come and drop their waste off there. The idea is to make people aware. You don't have to throw it in the river. There’s a place down the street, because often that’s the case. People just don’t know where it is,” he says.
Similar to Plastic Bank, another aspect of Gringgo’s mission is to teach locals that “the recycling industry is a commodity business”. Trash is not waste. It’s misplaced materials that are able to be recovered and get money from.
With the growing tourism industry, Olivier says it’s not surprise that the island can’t manage the increasing waste produced. “It’s about 10kg of waste for the average tourist, to about 2kg of waste a day for the average Indonesian.”
Working alongside the government, Olivier is thankful to see not only attitudes but policies changing. “This has been a problem that has been neglected for years and years and years, and they are only trying to get their handle on it now.”
Gringgo’s pilot model has been a proven success with a platform that is starting to be copied throughout the island. “It’s understanding that if you want to deal with the problem, you need to start dealing with the collection,” Pouillon says.
“There is a global urgency”
After seeing the soupy sludge of plastic and sand littered with drinking straws, cigarette butts and crumpled plastic, passionate surfers Luise Grossman and Felix Wunner felt called to do something to fix the problem of marine waste.
“As a surfer, it struck us probably a bit more than other travelers. Paddling through rubbish on a favourite surf break is a heartbreaker. I travelled to Bali the first time in 2006. Since then things have become worse, but I am sure that our generation has the power and dedication to turn things to the better,” says Luise.
Together the pair founded the dynamic company, FiveOceans, with a vision to create sustainable products for high performance surfing out of trash from Bali.
Their debut product the ecoFin is the first sustainable surfboard fin made from 100 percent recycled plastics from Bali’s beaches and reinforced with fiberglass to meet the standards of high performance surfing.
“Our mission is to reach out to the most people possible, because only then, we will be able to trigger a change. When you are starting from zero, your only currency is passion,” Luise says.
“We need every stakeholder to help”
Despite the individual successes of these organisations, Wisakananda Pradipta believes a combination of innovative solutions will be the only cure for the waste crisis in Bali. Small and large scale organisations should collaborate in order to fix the problem, he says.
“It’s just funny because it’s like you’re in the same boat but everybody’s going in a different direction, we’re going nowhere doing that. Why don’t we just work together? There’s enough waste for everybody.”
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