Indonesia confronts a wastage scourge; plastic, biowaste and textile. Can a circular economy provide a solution?

pile of plastic rubbish

The AIC through its Partnership for Australia-Indonesia (PAIR) research program is investigating some of the biggest global challenges including climate change. In this article we look at the system of a circular economy and how it can help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

 

Moving towards a circular economy has been touted as a solution to Indonesia’s significant problems in managing both plastic and biodegradable waste.

Indonesia’s waste challenges have made global headlines lately as teams of volunteers worked to clean up Bali’s popular tourist beaches from waves of plastic.

Waste has been identified as a significant problem not only for Indonesia but also for Southeast Asia as a whole.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, Indonesia is the second largest plastic polluter after China, producing 3.2 million tonnes of unmanaged plastic waste a year, with about 1.3 million tonnes ending up in the sea.

Food waste in Southeast Asia also has been described as a “critical environmental problem”, with lost food finding its way into tips or landfills where it decomposes.

Plastic waste contributes to environmental degradation in a number of ways.

Plastic production requires the burning of fossil fuels while plastic wastes continue to leak plastic greenhouse gases as they break down in the environment.

Microplastics also end up in waterways and soils, ultimately ingested by animals and humans.

A so-called ‘circular economy’ could provide the answer for the problem of plastic, biodegradable and even textile wastes, the latter being an important industry for Indonesia but also one that causes significant environmental impact.

Indonesia launched a Circular Economy Roadmap last year at Jakarta’s Green Economy Expo.

The roadmap, which offers no timeline, focuses on targets in five priority sectors of food and beverages, textiles, construction, plastic and electronics.

Minister of National Development Planning/Head of Bappenas Suharso Monoarfa called the circular economy one of the strategies in realising a green economy.

According to the minister, implementing a circular economy would provide several benefits including boosting GDP and creating up to 4.4 million green jobs.

He said the potential to reduce waste generation by up to 52 percent by 2030 compared with current approaches as well as helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A number of environmentally friendly innovations were discussed during the Expo, including an Indonesian business called EcoTouch, a startup that is producing environmentally friendly products from recycled textile waste.

According to the company, EcoTouch strives “to create a circular economy where textile waste is not discarded but repurposed into new products”.

Associate Professor Glen Croy of the Monash Sustainable Development Institute said the journey to a circular economy was relevant to Southeast Asia and Indonesia in terms of plastic, mineral and textile waste.

“Indonesia has a lot of opportunity and Southeast as a broader region has a lot of opportunity given the amount of manufacturing that occurs there,” he said.

Associate Professor Croy said the opportunity in Southeast Asia existed across four key areas:

  • design (product and process design, including consideration of inputs to these)
  • manufacture (including efficiencies, effectiveness, and waste minimisation)
  • use (including use extension through re-use, resell, and repair), and;
  • value capture (including through refurbishment, remanufacturing, repurposing, and then recycling)

“Drivers, such as recycled material inputs, would also likely induce change through the value capture phases as well, at a local/regional level, though also international (noting that there are various restrictions on moving ‘waste’/residual resources internationally),” A/Prof Croy said.

Southeast Asia Development Solutions (SEADS), part of the Asia Development Bank, says the transition to a circular economy “is crucial to attaining the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 of “vibrant, sustainable, and highly integrated economies”.

Rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in Southeast Asia has contributed to prosperity but has also come at a cost.

“The current economic model of ‘take, make, dispose’ is unsustainable,” according to SEADS.

A circular economy goes beyond plastic and has been touted as a partial solution to Southeast Asia’s shortage of fertiliser and an alternative to synthetic fertilisers which come with their own environmental issues.

Biofertilisers have been derived from insect and seaweed farming and seaweed biofertiliser is said to be rich in macro-and micro-nutrients with the added benefits of improving soil and plant health.

Another option comes from large-scale nutrient recovery from sewage, human waste having the necessary nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and micro-nutrients such as copper, iron, magnesium and zinc.

A/Prof Croy said designing products to ensure their repurposing would be crucial in bringing about circular economies in Southeast Asia.

“What we also note, though, is that while [Southeast Asia] has the opportunity because manufacturing occurs there and we can recycle things through the manufacturing system, part of this comes down to the design [of products],” he said.

“The way that we design the products… and the way that we design the components and materials… is part of the circularity story.”

A/Prof Croy talked about critical minerals “where we know that there is a limited supply” of non-regenerative material and there is an “intense demand” for new technologies of green energy or renewable energy such as nickel used in electric vehicle batteries.

“With that there is an increasing need to not only find these metals but also when the battery is at the end of life there is the opportunity to repair or repurpose and if that is not possible how we can recycle those critical minerals back through the system rather than searching and digging up new parts of the world,” he said.

Definitions:

United Nations, a circular economy is “an economy in which waste and pollution do not exist by design, products and materials are kept in use and natural systems are regenerated”.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a key charity based in the United Kingdom, describes a circular economy as offering a solution where wastes can be “kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling and composting” and one that decouples economic activity from consumption of finite resources.

The Partnership for Australia-Indonesia Research, PAIR Sulawesi program is funded by the Indonesian and Australian governments.

Feature image by Calvin Sihongo and Unsplash

Digital communications coordinator,
The Australia-Indonesia Centre