About four million people live in Bali and many of them are daily users of products like milk, juice, tea and coconut cream packaged in disposable coated cartons. Until recently, most of these ended up in a landfill (best scenario) or just dumped with other rubbish by the roadside or over a riverbank (worst). As even the most casual visitor to Bali is painfully aware, waste management is a huge issue here. Plastic water bottles, among the worst offenders, are mostly collected and recycled now. But millions of drink cartons are tossed away each week as well. Since last year, EcoBali Recycling and Tetra Pak Indonesia have teamed up on a pilot project to recycle as many cartons as they can collect.
EcoBali has come a long way in three years. Started with about three million rupiah in seed money in June 2005, its goal was to address the problem of waste disposal by providing a recycling service for homes in Legian, Seminyak and Canggu. In those early days it had neither office nor phone number; volunteers managed the client base by email and a truck was rented on a daily basis for pick-ups. Co-founder Paolo, a dedicated environmentalist, is still active behind the scenes while Ketut Mertaadi and Paola are managing the day-to-day operations and programs with a team of four. Today EcoBali serves more than 200 clients efficiently from a Canggu office with two trucks operating full time. Teaming up with the Swedish firm Tetra Pak Indonesia, EcoBali now also operates a carton recycling program around Bali in collaboration with waste recovery centers, collectors, hotels and schools.
Tetra Pak, one of the main producers of the packaging used for disposable beverage cartons in Indonesia, is committed to minimizing its environmental impact. The company has set a target to reduce CO2 emissions by 10% by 2010 as its contribution to the reduction of global warming. The boxes are composed of 74% virgin food grade paper, mostly using plantation wood, and 5 thin layers of plastic and aluminum. This design preserves the nutritional characteristics of the drinks without the need for refrigeration. During the past few years a repulping/hydrapulping process has been developed in collaboration with a research center in Java (BBPK), enabling the recovery of the long fiber from post-consumer beverage cartons. This pulp can be used to make good quality recycled paper products including paper. (Promotional materials for this program are printed on paper obtained from re-pulped cartons.) Research is still underway to optimize the recycling of the aluminum and plastic layers.
This program, designed in collaboration with Tetra Pak Indonesia and managed by EcoBali and other two NGOs in Java, has two components. One is the collection of post consumer beverage cartons for recycling. Until September 2007, EcoBali collaborated with Temesi recycling centre in Gianyar. With Temesi’s shift to a focus on compost production, EcoBali now works with Jimbaran Lestari, one of Bali’s largest recycling centres, as the main collection point. About seven tons of post-consumer beverage cartons have been collected for recycling to date. Jimbaran Lestari operates a recycling collection service for large hotels in the south and EcoBali offers a complementary service to homes, villa developments, schools and businesses.
Hotels also have been invited to participate in this program and currently eight have trained their kitchen and housekeeping staff to separate cartons for recycling which are picked up by EcoBali and taken to Jimbaran Lestari for consolidation and shipment to Java for re-pulping.
The second component of the program is education. A lack of awareness and understanding of the broader issues is at the root of Bali’s waste problems. As elsewhere, teaching the children is an effective way to introduce new concepts to the household. “You have to provide a solution before you ask people to change their behaviour,” says Paola. “It took many years to socialize waste separation in Europe and North America, remember.”
Tetra Pak Indonesia’s support has made it possible for EcoBali to deliver training in five elementary schools with a total of 1200 students, with one staff member committed to this program full time; more schools are being added. EcoBali carried out a program in 25 schools last year along with the Indonesian Cricket Association and Ultra Jaya, a milk producer. Girls and boys learned to play cricket. After the match cartons of milk were distributed to introduce the concept of nutrition, then the children learned about waste separation and recycling with a focus on beverage cartons. Another program in four schools in the south introduces the concept of waste separation and provides bins to collect the empty drink cartons and other recyclables. EcoBali collects from all these schools.
Aside from the carton recycling program, EcoBali’s main focus is to deliver professional recycling services as well as to disseminate awareness and education regarding waste management to its broad range of clients. Its mandate is to achieve a cleaner environment, encourage best practices and increase awareness of waste management problems and sustainable solutions among communities, homes and business in Bali. EcoBali collects non-organic waste weekly from homes, schools, villa developments and businesses in Seminyak, Canggu, Legian, Sanur and Ubud.
Each new client is visited by a member of the team who trains the staff on how to dispose of and separate waste correctly, distributes bilingual literature and answers any questions. Ecobali also provides training on composting of organic waste on request. Distinctive maroon and green bags are provided to each client for clean plastic, paper, glass and metal which is collected weekly.
EcoBali is a potential collaborative partner for responsible industries that are committed to environmental responsibility. For more information on this or to join the recycling service, please contact Ketut at ecobali@ yahoo.com or (0361) 844-6602 / 790-7314.
