BATTLING BALI’S WASTE WOE
Trash Hero group uses apps to organise weekly garbage collection
FIVE years ago, tour guide Wayan Aksara noticed that more and more visitors were complaining about garbage on Bali’s oncepristine beaches.
The island’s mounting rubbish problem was also becoming personal for Wayan, who lives near Saba beach, an undeveloped area close to the holiday resort of Sanur, which faces a constant battle with trash washed onto its shores from a nearby river.
“Every time we drove around, our guests would comment about it not being clean and the large amount of plastic,” said Wayan.
“They would say the trash is bad, that tourism here is not sustainable, and ask what we are doing about it.”
Wayan joined and is now chairman of Trash Hero Indonesia, a community group with more than 20 chapters across Indonesia and about 12 on Bali.
It uses social media to organise weekly garbage-collection events for volunteers.
Wayan, a father-of-two, also gives talks at schools and community events on how to manage waste better.
Garbage collection services and infrastructure have largely failed to keep pace with rapid development.
As awareness rises, civil society groups like Trash Hero are playing an important role in Bali’s push to keep its famous beaches and temples free of rubbish.
On Saba beach, surrounded by coconut trees and grazing cows, the garbage strewn about includes toothpaste tubes, shoes, plastic bottles, nappies, drinking straws and cigarette packets.
“There is a plastic problem in Bali. We need time but we (have) started already,” Wayan said.
Stung by criticism, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, who has targeted “10 new Balis” across the archipelago to boost tourism, has been quick to act.
Last year, Indonesia’s Minister for Maritime Affairs Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan launched a national action plan pledging up to US$1 billion (RM4 billion) to cut ocean waste by 70 per cent by 2025.
Bali’s most popular tourist beaches are now cleaned of trash at least once a day by local authorities using heavy machinery.
Mass clean-ups are organised at least three times a year on Bali and across Indonesia, bringing together tens of thousands of tourists and locals to tidy up communities.
Despite this, the rubbish problem on Bali was so bad late last year that officials declared a “garbage emergency”.
Tracing the origins of the trash on Bali’s beaches is difficult, but experts estimate up to 80 per cent comes from the island itself.
Rubbish collected from hotels and villages by workers is often dumped in rivers and then carried out to sea before finding its way back to the coastline.
At Sanur Kaja village here, garbage gatherers are reaping the financial rewards of joining a pilot project run by Gringgo Trash Tech.
Apps and Global Positioning System helped create a zoning system in the village of 5,000 residents, enabling garbage gatherers to become better-organised and more efficient.
“If these guys stop working, this city will be shut down in less than a week,” said Gringgo cofounder Olivier Pouillon.
Besides improving coordination with the local authority, Gringgo’s app provides the latest prices for recyclable waste.
“The quickest way to stop the pollution is to track where the waste is going, and that’s exactly what we’ve done,” he said.