Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
Asia-Pacific, Environment, Featured, Headlines, Natural Resources, Small Island Developing States, Sustainable Development Goals, TerraViva United Nations, Water & Sanitation
Environment
Organic waste being composted at a community-led waste management facility in Sesdan village of Gianyar regency, Bali. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS
GIANYAR, Bali, May 14 2025 (IPS) – It was Christmas Eve last year when visitors across several tourism hotspots in Bali woke up to a ghastly scene they hadn’t expected: layers of cans, bags, bottles, and driftwood covering their favorite sandy beaches, washed up by hours of rain and high tide. So bad was the situation that from Kuta to Legian and Seminyak to Jimbaran—none of the island’s picturesque beaches was clean enough to attract the visitors for a swim.
The incident intensified the debate that had been raging across Bali for quite some time: was the world’s most picture-perfect holiday destination drowning in plastic waste and ocean debris?
“Garbage tides are not new to Bali nowadays. Every year, we see it increasing but around Christmas, when it’s the peak of our tourism season, we did not expect to see this. Nobody expected to see trash on the beach. All day we picked up the trash and cleaned the beach. It was not an easy job, says Siboto Sayeda, 25, who was one of the many locals who volunteered to remove the waste from the beaches. The cleaning drive—organized by a local NGO—went on for two days before tourists could swim again.
Nearly four months later, several beaches, including the beachfront of the ever-popular Kuta beach are still often barraged by a tide of waste.
Sweta Kala—a visitor from northern India’s Punjab who is in Bali for her honeymoon—says that the garbage on the beach has been a huge disappointment. “We chose to come to Bali instead of Goa (a beach destination in western India), but we haven’t been able to swim even once. The entire beach looks dirty. Our friends are advising us to move to Nusa Dua, but we already paid in advance for our entire vacation, she says.
Burn or Landfills? No Easy Solutions
Data from the Bali Central Bureau of Statistics (BPSJ) & Bali Tourism Authority (DISPARDA) shows that nearly 8 million tourists visited the island destination in 2024; of them, six million are foreigners. The total waste generated collectively by the visitors and the locals in the year was nearly 2 million tons. This is a 30 percent increase from the waste generated in 2020, says Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR), a Jakarta-based energy and environment think tank.
“The causes of increased waste generation include a lack of awareness of waste management in most communities, including tourists visiting Bali. In addition, although district and city governments have regulations related to waste (such as waste sorting), enforcement of regulations and limited waste management infrastructure are still contributing to the increasing volume of waste, Tumiwa says.
Currently, the waste is usually deposited in a landfill, TPA Suwung, a 32-hectare landfill located in the heart of Bali or occasionally burned—especially in beach locations with no wide, motorable roads. However, the landfill is nearing its capacity, and the government is said to be scouting for new landfill sites in other parts of Bali.
A community-led solution movement
Thirty-three kilometers away from Kuta beach, villagers from 10 villages in Gianyar have joined hands to find a solution to the mounting waste – both organic and inorganic.
Named Merah Putih Hijau (Red White Green), the villagers’ group has clear goals: manage waste at the source so that there is no further need for either burning or dumping in the landfills; build a community-led circular economy model based on waste; and promote sustainable farming using organic manure while creating waste-based jobs and income for community members.
Their current efforts of the group, however, are primarily focused on running a waste composting facility Located in Sidan village, the facility is used to sort, compost, and package the organic waste. A visit to the center gives one a full view of those efforts, where a group of six to seven villagers can be seen engaged in various waste management activities. While a two-member team is seen sorting organic waste from inorganic waste, others are seen crushing, filtering, and packaging.
“This is a program run by, for, and of the villagers,” says Dewi Kusumawati, Project Manager at Mera Putih Hijau – it involves every villager’s active participation. “We begin by asking everyone in the village to sort their waste at home. Then, we collect the organic waste and bring it to this 3R-Transfer Depo (TPS3R) waste management facility, where it is used to produce quality compost.”
The history of the waste management program is connected to the official waste management program that, villagers say, hasn’t served its purpose to keep the island truly clean and at times has caused more harm than good.
Seven years ago, in 2017, the government of Indonesia set an ambitious target for waste management in its National Development Plan (Kebijakan dan Strategi Nasional). The target included reducing household waste by 30 percent and the handling of household waste by 70 percent by this year (2025).
As a part of this plan, in 2021 the government provided funding to all regencies to build village-level waste management facilities and accordingly, 129 facilities were built, including 36 in Gianyar Regency. But less than 50 percent of the facilities are well-managed and operated, says Hermitianta Prasetya, a Community Relation Manager at Bumi Sasmaya Foundation, which manages and funds Merah Putih Hijau.
According to Prasetya, the National Development Plan on waste management also included promoting organic farming and in 2019 the government passed a policy called Organic Farming System Provincial Regulation. But, in Bali, the farming sector is heavily dependent on chemical fertilizer and the new regulation didn’t have provisions to help farmers make a clear shift to using organic fertilizer with training or step-by-step technical guidance. As a result, it became very hard to convince farmers to change to more sustainable agricultural practices such as using organic fertilizer.
The other reason behind this program has been curbing the current trend of sending waste to landfills: besides the government-owned landfill at Suwung, which handles 1,500 tons of waste every day, it is reported that there are also some 1,000 illegal open dump sites across the province, which pollute both the island’s water sources and environment.
“Currently, about 70 percent of the waste in Bali is taken to dump into landfills. The remainder is mainly organic waste that can be turned into compost. The Merah Putih Hijau program is trying to change the approach towards waste. So, we ask everyone in the village to sort their waste at home. Then, we collect the organic waste and bring it to this 3R-Transfer Depo (TPS3R) waste management facility, where it is used to produce quality compost. This compost then goes right back to the villagers to use in their farms. So, we are aiming to meet the village’s needs at where they are,” says Dewi Kusumawati, Manager of Merah Putih Hijau.
To help the villagers better understand the difference between organic and inorganic waste, the Merah Putih Hijau team also spends substantial time training villagers in separating organic and inorganic waste, composting, and different aspects of sustainable waste management as well as sustainable agriculture. The team has so far done dozens of trainings, says Kusumawati.
Persisting Plastic Problem
Despite their successful composting initiative, the Merah Putih Hijau team has a long way to go before achieving their dream goal of treating all waste locally. The biggest reason behind that is the ever-increasing volume of plastic and other non-compostable waste.
The team collects both organic and plastic waste. But right now, they do not have the capacity to recycle the inorganic waste. In their composting station, an entire room is filled with bundles of plastic bottles, bags, and other waste. But in the absence of a recycling facility or a program, the waste keeps piling up.
This is a much bigger problem than a village community can handle, admits Prasetya, especially because managing plastic and other inorganic waste needs more effort, including technical expertise and specialized facilities. This cannot be done alone by a village community, and it will require partnership with other actors, including the government and the private business community.
The plan is now to start conversations for building those partnerships that can lead to bigger, stronger waste management initiatives, especially to tackle the plastic waste.
“We are going to create several local networks with hotels, restaurants, and other tourism-based businesses. We are already talking to government officials. Eighty percent of the Balinese population currently earn their livelihood from tourism. And piling garbage is a threat to our tourism and our livelihood. So, there is a common good for us to achieve by partnering and solving the plastic waste together,” Prasteya says.
Considering there are nearly 1300 hotels and restaurants in Giyaniar alone, this is going to be an uphill task for the community group to bring them all into one place and convince them to participate in a collective waste management movement. But Agastya Yatra, the head of the Bumi Sasmaya Foundation, believes that it is possible to do so. The garbage issue, he says, has already been noticed. Now, it’s time to find a solution that works in favor of the locals.
“Eighty percent of our people earn their living from tourism. So, we need solutions that will not affect tourism. We need to keep our tourists happy and for that, we need to keep our villages and beaches clean. This will work only if we join hands and work together,” he says. “Together, if we can segregate waste properly, recycle, and reuse, then slowly but surely, our problem with waste will vanish,” says Yatra.
IPS UN Bureau Report
IPS UN Bureau, IPS UN Bureau Report, Bali
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.