Alliance to End Plastic Waste pilots simple recycling system across four Indonesian villages

The lack of waste and recycling infrastructure in low-income countries is a key factor in the global leak of plastic into the natural environment. While the UN attempts to shepherd countries towards an international treaty to tackle the issue, on-the-ground initiatives are urgently required to stem the tide of waste pollution.

In the vanguard of these efforts, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) has launched a pilot in Indonesia's Malang Regency in East Java, involving door-to-door collection and management of household waste and recycling.

The project began in March this year, operating across four villages: Tulus Besar, Duwet Krajan, Wringin Anom, and Kenongo. 2,300 households pre-registered to participate, with modelling showing that 80 per cent of households in the covered area must take part for the pilot to be economically viable.

AEPW, a non-profit funded by major chemical producers (including BASF and Dow), has committed to providing technical support and funding for infrastructure development and equipment, including waste collection vehicles. In partnership, the local government has provided land for construction, as well as covering operating costs for the scheme, including workers’ wages.

"When hiring, we prioritised recruiting village residents to increase the level of engagement and enhance the feeling of community ownership for this system," explains Bimo Harimurti, Indonesia Program Advisor for AEPW

The collected recyclables such as plastic, glass and metal are subsequently sold to local recyclers, generating one of the two revenue streams for the system.

The other comes from household waste collection fees, with the expectation that residents will experience the environmental benefit from the service, rather than the localised effect from burning or flytipped waste.

Behaviour change campaign drives participation

The Alliance to End Plastic Waste and the local Department of Environment initiated a campaign to educate residents about the benefits of a recycling service.

According to Allison Lim, AEPW’s Vice President of Corporate & Public Affairs: "We have also been working on a behaviour change campaign, [encouraging] householders to separate their recycling into two bins, so nothing too fancy. It's just organic and inorganic they collect."

The campaign hopes to explain how this increases the efficiency of downstream sorting, thereby improving the quality of recycling.

She added: "We are also looking at the enabling policies and legislation that is available. Because while in many parts of the world we may be used to paying for waste collection, many Indonesians aren't, and that's why they have a leakage problem."

The initiative paves the way for the local government to eventually establish a public utility that will be able to sell different sorted fractions of waste collected from households. The funds from the sale of recyclables, combined with waste collection fees, are intended to drive longer-term sustainability of the integrated waste management system.

The Alliance is currently establishing recycling infrastructure, Lim reports: “We are building material recovery facilities, and then we are also providing equipment like trucks, and tricycles, so that they can navigate some of the narrower streets within the villages. We are also supplying the bins. So the yellow bin for inorganic and the green bins for organic waste."

The pilot currently involves basic sorting facilities, with plans to develop more automated sorting lines, transfer stations, and material recovery facilities.

Strategic shift towards a systems approach

The Malang Regency pilot exemplifies the Alliance's strategic evolution announced in its Progress Report 2024. The organisation is shifting from funding numerous smaller projects to larger-scale, integrated programmes with substantial investment, designed to drive systems-level change.

The Alliance approved three country programmes in December 2024 in Indonesia, South Africa, and India. Indonesia was selected as the first, because the Alliance had existing experience there, having learned "a lot of hard lessons about what it takes to recycle in what we typically call underserved areas," according to Lim.

The country generates around 3.2 million tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste annually. Despite basic waste management services existing in some parts of the country, Indonesia is still classified as having an incipient system under the Plastic Waste Management Framework, a meta-analysis of plastic waste management and recycling maturity across 192 countries.

Improving plastic waste management represents one of the Indonesian government's national priorities. Indonesia was the first country to establish a National Plastic Action Partnership with the goal of achieving near-zero plastic leakage by 2040.

Economic viability central to sustainability

With experience of over 80 global projects, the AEPW’s Progress Report 2024 states that ‘integrated waste management and recycling systems require the business models behind these solutions to be economically viable’.

The Alliance is using its capital to attract larger external investments, catalysing $611 million in funding commitments from third parties and impact investors.

The Malang project is part of a broader national initiative in Indonesia – the ‘Solid Waste Management for Sustainable Urban Development’ project – led by the Government of Indonesia and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), with AEPW being the first private partner to contribute concessional resources. 

Eventually, the pilot should reach up to 12 villages, encompassing approximately 18,000 households. Once fully operational, the scheme is anticipated to collect 750 tonnes of municipal waste per month, recycling around 20 tonnes of plastic. If successful, the local government hopes to develop a sustainable business and operating model that others can replicate.

The village head of the Duwet Krajan Village, Mulyo Siswanto said: "Although it is still in its early stages, the project is already reshaping residents' approach to waste disposal. Instead of the original tendency to throw their garbage into the gutter, at the side of the house, or even the wider neighbourhood area in general, this behaviour has changed... it has now started to decrease."

Harimurti reports positive resident feedback so far: "They say they are pleased to do the right thing for themselves and for the environment. Feedback given so far indicates they are also satisfied with the services provided."