Eight years ago, Tangkas villagers like people throughout Indonesia tossed their household waste into the river. They really had no other option. There were no government or private waste management alternatives. Semarapura, the biggest city in the region, had trash pickup but it was indiscriminately tipped into the local dump in Dawan which often caught on fire and polluted the village’s air and water.
Our friend Ketut Darmawan from Tangkas decided he would find a solution, and in 2016 he did. He established the Tangkas Village Recycling Program (TPS) which picks up garbage every two days from the 300 households it serves. TPS staff then recycles 93% of the waste. The organic materials are turned into compost which farmers use in their fields and the plastics, glass and metals are recycled. Darmawan was the engine behind this effort, and he built a coalition of supporters including the Klungkung Regional government who paid to build the recycling center, the Tangkas village government who helped pay for its staff and operations and Keep Bali Beautiful which set up an Airbnb Tour Experience to cover the remaining operational costs. An award-winning video by film-maker Jillian Li beautifully describes the system. You can view the video here.
After TPS proved successful, the question arose: Can this operation be scaled up to be used as a model for other villages and regions in Bali?
You bet it could. Thanks to Klungkung’s innovative Governor, I Nyoman Suwirta, funding and leadership by Indonesia’s federal government under President Jokowi and most especially Darmawan’s gifted management skills, there is now an efficient regional waste management system that has replicated the Tangkas village success.
You have to give a lot of credit to Governor Suwirta. He provided seed money to the Tangkas village program, and watched to see if Darmawan could achieve his goals. When the TPS proved successful, he plucked Darmawan out of the private sector and gave him the government job of creating a regional waste management system. Most importantly, the Governor gave Darmawan the capital funds to build it out. About the same time, Bali’s provincial government also pitched in with funds as did the national government. Jokowi’s administration also wrote policies to establish federal recycling and waste management standards. And perhaps the hardest step of all: Balinese citizens began to change their minds and became very supportive of efforts to clean up their villages and towns.
In less capable hands this mashup of village, regional, provincial and federal agencies, plus the private sector could have spelled disaster. But Darmawan with his rare combination of management and political skills wove together a workable and efficient system. It works like this: Capital funding from the Klungkung region, operational funding from the Bali province and federal government, villages which provide the land for building waste and recycling facilities and help from private sector partners such Bali Waste Cycle which retrieves recycled materials from Klungkung and arranges for their transformation into new products.
I saw the system in operation at the region’s central waste processing facility, whose acronym ironically is TOSS. This is where the City of Semarapura’s waste is processed. Every two days a truck picks up waste from the city’s households. (Commercial operations like the local market receive every day pickup.) They return to TOSS where workers sort the waste into four categories: 1) Organic waste, 2) Recyclable materials (glass, metal and plastic) that can be sold, 3) Residue that is sold in bulk, and 4) Leftover waste that is trucked to the dump.
In addition, village recycling operations similar to the TPS in Tangkas have been set up in 42 of the Klungkung region’s 53 villages.
The operation has been an unqualified success. Before, all of this garbage would have been dumped into the river, burned or piled up at the dump. Now, nearly 97% of it is recycled or reused. The organic waste, which makes up the bulk of the waste stream, is made into compost which is provided to farmers. Darmawan is continually improving the system. For example, after touring composting operations in Japan last year, he tweaked his system to make it even more efficient.
The recycling operation requires a whole team of workers to first sort the materials into bags for glass, metal, and the many types of plastic that can be recycled. These range from high value plastic which sells for 1,200rp ( eight cents) per ton to lower value plastic bags which sell for 300rp (two cents) per ton. The sorting is supervised by Bali Waste Cycle staff. Every day one of their truck arrives to pick up the recycled products. Klungkung’s share of the recycling revenue goes back into the program. Bali Waste Cycle then combines Klungkung’s recycled products with those from its other clients in Denpasar and other places.
The residue waste stream is composed of bits of plastic, dirt and other junk that cannot be composted or recycled. Villagers often burned this junk or tossed it into the street. But now collects it and sends it to a manufacturer in Surabaya where it’s mixed into cement and becomes part of Indonesia’s expanding road and freeway infrastructure.
The remaining 3% is trucked to the dump in Dawan village. The goal is to reduce this amount to zero.
Education is also an important part of Darmwan;’s mission. There are regular tours of TOSS by school groups who receive a tour and learn about the benefits of recycling and how it really works. Darmawan also works with Eco Clubs at Klungkung’s high schools which help in spreading the word and supporting the syste
For the most part, Klungkung citizens are enthusiastic about the system. Pak Gus Gangga from Dawan is enthusiastic about the improvements noting the reduced truck traffic in his village. He is also excited that a new village TPS recently opened in Dawan. He’s observed that the village is cleaner and free from the trash that once was freely tossed. Currently, Klungkung citizens are paying very little for the program. Federal law sets household costs at 3,000rp a month (about 20 cents US). By contrast, a 20kg bag of rice costs 250,000rp. Commercial and industrial waste pickup costs are also established by federal policy.
The low prices charged to citizens and businesses create support for the program, but they hardly pay the cost for the operations. For example, while monthly operational costs are about 310,000,000RP per month, fee revenue is about 17 million RP or about 5%. Government subsidies make up the difference for now.
It’s a huge success, but Darmawan is still working to make it even better. He’s working to build village recycling centers in places that don’t yet have them, and he’s continuing to make the system work better and more efficiently.
Where Klungkung has succeeded, other regions have not yet established workable systems. But there appears to be growing interest in following Klungkung’s example. In fact, people from throughout Bali and the rest of Indonesia are making the trek to Klungkung to ask for Darmawan’s advice and help.