Page 21 from: Recycling International – March/April issue 2023

COUNTRY REPORT

21recyclinginternational.com | March/April | 2023

THREE-WHEELER PICK-UP
Most household waste is collected by
14 small three-wheeler trucks that can
reach even the most remote places.
‘We do have one big collection truck
but that is useless in the narrow alleys
of the kampongs.’
Webster points out the collection sys-
tem set up by STOP is not about high
valuable plastics such as PET bottles.
‘You won’t find many plastic bottles in
our streams – they’re mostly covered
by the informal sector and the waste
pickers. We focus on the total waste
which includes the hard-to-recycle
materials like multi-layer bags, food
packaging but also nappies – basically
the household waste mix.’
ON THEIR OWN FEET
Community participation is at the
heart of the project which was handed
over to the local government in March
2023. Since the start of the pro-
gramme in 2019, STOP Pasuruan has
provided waste collection to more
than 132 000 people in Lekok and the
Nguling municipality, created 120 per-
manent jobs and collected over 5 000
tonnes of waste, 700 tonnes of which
was plastic.
Nestlé was the first food and bever-
age company to join the project as a
strategic partner and is the majority
funder of STOP Pasuruan. Other
funders include Siegwerk, Borealis,
Borouge and Nova Chemicals.

that is 95% Muslim it is crucial to
involve religious groups and leaders
and have their full support. Webster
adds: ‘Their message was “cleaniness
is part of our faith”. In other words:
you cannot be a good Muslim if you
still dump your waste.’
‘We’ve come far but we’ve managed
to win the hearts and minds of the
communities. They were used to
burn their waste, now each household
pays the equivalent of one euro
per month for their waste to be col-
lected.’

‘WASTE GUY’ WEBSTER
Proper waste management requires
lasting efforts and significant contribu-
tions from all stakeholders involved
and is vital for the health and well-
being of our local communities, says
Webster.
A visit to a landfill site in the early 90s
filled him with both horror and fasci-
nation and he has been working ever
since to grapple with what he calls
‘the global waste emergency’. He
worked in Ghana and Congo among
other countries. Compared to Africa,
the biggest advantage in setting up
waste management in Indonesia is the
infrastructure, which on East Java is
quite good. ‘There are proper roads,
even in the more remote places. Also,
there is massive industrial develop-
ment so both suppliers and buyers of
recyclables are close by.’

COLLECTING AND PROCESSING
Webster and his team take me to
STOP’s Mumdesma Lekok collection &
sorting station where the waste col-
lected from the Pasaruan communities
comes in to be manually separated.
The facility can handle up to 30
tonnes of waste per day. After sort-
ing, the plastics go to dedicated recy-
clers for further processing while most
of the other waste materials are land-
filled. ‘At this stage we cannot recycle
everything but landfilling is still a
much better solution than illegal
dumping or burning,’ he argues. The
danger of open burning is expected
to be a big driver for controlled col-
lection and disposals in the future, in
Indonesia as elsewhere.

Waste arriving
at the collec-
tion/sorting sta-
tion.

The facility can
handle up to 30
tonnes of waste
per day.

Manual separation.
How to recog-
nise materials…

16-17-18-20-21_countryreport-indonesia.indd 21 15-03-2023 11:41