In recent years, the provincial government has taken steps to curb pollution at its source, including an April 2025 ban on the production and distribution of single-use plastic water bottles under one litre.<\/p>\n
Yet, regulation has struggled to keep pace with reality. In provinces across Indonesia \u2013 Bali included \u2013 waste systems remain under strain, with overflowing dumpsites, unregulated burning and persistent leakage into waterways that eventually feed into the ocean.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we see on the beach is the end of an entire ecosystem of failure,\u201d says Mr Sam Bencheghib, co-founder of environmental charity Sungai Watch. \u201cBy the time trash reaches a tourist beach, it has already travelled through communities that don\u2019t have access to basic waste management. The real battle is upstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
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(From left) The siblings behind Sungai Watch \u2013 Gary, Kelly and Sam Benchegib.<\/p>\n
PHOTO: SUNGAI WATCH<\/p>\n
That upstream reality has complicated the idea of responsibility. Tourism \u2013 a cornerstone of Bali\u2019s economy \u2013 contributes heavily to the island\u2019s waste load, prompting officials to press hotels and resorts to take greater accountability for what they generate.<\/p>\n
But for many communities, the consequences of inaction are immediate, regardless of who the waste ultimately serves.<\/p>\n
Rivers make this imbalance impossible to ignore. If beaches are where Bali\u2019s waste crisis is photographed, rivers are where it is formed \u2013 slowly, invisibly and far from public attention.<\/p>\n
Sungai Watch, founded in 2020 by Mr Bencheghib and his siblings Gary and Kelly, arrived at this conclusion early on. Weekly beach clean-ups, he recalls, offered little more than momentary relief. \u201cWe\u2019d clean a beach on Saturday and by Sunday it would be covered again,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s when we realised we were treating symptoms, not the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem, as he saw it, was not the plastic in the water but what lay upstream: villages without collection services, households with no viable alternatives and systems that demanded behaviour change without providing infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Rivers, cutting across these realities, became a kind of diagnostic tool \u2013 showing how waste moves, accumulates and escapes.<\/p>\n
Sungai Watch\u2019s river barriers \u2013 now installed across hundreds of waterways \u2013 were designed to interrupt that flow. Simple in design, they prevent plastic from reaching the sea while making the problem visible to communities living alongside it.<\/p>\n
A clogged barrier is difficult to ignore, it forces a confrontation with what would otherwise pass unnoticed.<\/p>\n
But Mr Bencheghib is careful not to frame interception as a solution in itself. \u201cInterception without behaviour change is just an expensive band-aid,\u201d he says. \u201cIt buys time, but doesn\u2019t fix the root problem.\u201d<\/p>\n
That root problem, in his view, is access to waste services and affordable alternatives and systems that make better choices possible. \u201cWhen income is low and single-use sachets are the cheapest option, blaming consumers misses the point,\u201d he adds. \u201cThis is a design problem created far away from the rivers it pollutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The barriers do not solve Bali\u2019s waste crisis, but make it harder to deny \u2013 shifting the conversation from what washes up on shore to what flows through the island every day.<\/p>\n
Once waste is removed from a river or collected from a property, it enters the least understood phase of Bali\u2019s waste system \u2013 the point where materials are either properly handled or quietly lost.<\/p>\n
This is where Community Waste Project, founded in October 2024, operates.<\/p>\n
The organisation works primarily with businesses \u2013 particularly those in hospitality, such as Brunch Club, Finns Beach Club and Kynd Community \u2013 to manage what happens after waste leaves the bin.<\/p>\n
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Community Waste Project\u2019s zero-waste facility.<\/p>\n
PHOTO: COMMUNITY WASTE PROJECT<\/p>\n
Instead of sending mixed refuse to landfills or third-party collectors, waste is separated at the source and transported to the organisation\u2019s zero-waste facility, where it is processed in full view of the system to which it belongs.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the centre, waste doesn\u2019t disappear,\u201d says Ms Marcella. \u201cIt\u2019s weighed, sorted again, cleaned, processed and transformed. Every step is intentional.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organic waste is composted or sent to local pig farms. Certain plastics are cleaned, shredded and remade into usable materials. Other recyclables are channelled through verified downstream partners. What cannot be reused is documented and treated as a last resort rather than a default.<\/p>\n
The point, Ms Marcella explains, is not perfection but accountability.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaste has been engineered to vanish from our consciousness,\u201d she says. \u201cYou put it in a bin and someone else deals with it. That\u2019s where responsibility ends.\u201d<\/p>\n
By slowing down the system, Community Waste Project makes waste legible again. Businesses receive monthly reports detailing how much waste they generate and where it goes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people see real numbers and not estimates, behaviour starts to change,\u201d Ms Marcella says. \u201cTeams become more careful, more curious. They start asking where waste comes from, not just where it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her perspective shifted in the same way too. \u201cAt the start, I thought this was a technical problem,\u201d she says. \u201cBetter machines, better infrastructure. Over time, I realised it\u2019s mostly about people \u2013 habits, routines and consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n
This position, between collection and disposal, gives Community Waste Project a particular vantage point on Bali\u2019s waste crisis. It sees what happens when materials are mixed too early, rushed through the system or treated as someone else\u2019s problem. It also sees how much waste could be avoided.<\/p>\n
\u201cReduce, reuse and recycle sounds simple,\u201d Ms Marcella says. \u201cBut it starts with buying less and being more thoughtful. That part isn\u2019t dramatic and definitely not Instagrammable. But it\u2019s where the biggest impact is.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all the attention given to rivers and processing facilities, the durability of Bali\u2019s waste system ultimately hinges on something more fragile: whether communities are supported long enough for new systems to take root.<\/p>\n
This is where non-profit organisation Merah Putih Hijau puts in the work \u2013 often in villages far from centralised landfills, where waste collection is unreliable or absent. In these areas, waste does not wait for policy to catch up. It is burned, dumped or washed into irrigation channels out of necessity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWaste generation happens every day,\u201d says Mr Hermitianta Prasetya Putra, the organisation\u2019s programme director. \u201cIf there is no system, people will create their own \u2013 even if it damages their environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2016, Merah Putih Hijau\u2019s work has focused on what happens after a facility is built. Decentralised waste processing centres such as TPS 3R are often introduced as technical fixes meant to absorb household waste and divert it from landfills.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Hermitianta has seen how easily these facilities fail when treated as endpoints rather than as parts of a wider ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany TPS 3R facilities are launched with optimism, then left without long-term assistance,\u201d he explains. \u201cThey\u2019re expected to become self-sufficient almost immediately. Without business planning, professional support or consistent enforcement, they are planned to fail.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Daily compost processing at Keliki Village TPS 3R facility.<\/p>\n
PHOTO: MERAH PUTIH HIJAU<\/p>\n
When that happens, the burden does not disappear. It shifts back onto households, farmers and informal workers \u2013 the very communities the facilities were meant to support. Waste leaks into rivers and burning resumes. Trust in new systems erodes.<\/p>\n
For Mr Hermitianta, the issue is not a lack of technical knowledge. \u201cThe idea that Bali\u2019s waste problem exists because we don\u2019t know what to do is a misconception,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have the research, we have the models. What\u2019s missing is coordination, long-term commitment and political consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behaviour change, he adds, cannot be separated from economic reality. In some villages, separation rates improve rapidly once systems become reliable and fair. In others, residents are willing to pay more simply to maintain familiar habits.<\/p>\n
\u201cInformation alone doesn\u2019t change behaviour,\u201d he says. \u201cTime, convenience and cost shape decisions far more than awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is why Merah Putih Hijau places so much emphasis on community ownership. Systems designed with villages, rather than imposed upon them, are more likely to survive leadership changes, funding gaps and shifting political priorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen people see the system as \u2018ours\u2019 rather than \u2018a project\u2019, participation becomes normal,\u201d Mr Hermitianta explains.<\/p>\n
His concern, looking ahead, is not collapse \u2013 but stagnation \u2014 a cycle in which pilot programmes are endlessly repeated while underlying structures remain untouched. Without alignment between policy, infrastructure and community governance, he warns, Bali risks moving from one waste crisis to the next without resolving the conditions that create them.<\/p>\n
Across these different approaches, a shared understanding emerges: Bali\u2019s waste crisis will not be solved by a single intervention, organisation or policy. Clean-ups that do not involve processing merely move the problem. Infrastructure without education fails to change behaviour. Community systems without long-term support struggle to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no one solution to this,\u201d Ms Marcella says. \u201cIt\u2019s daily work done consistently across many hands.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mr Bencheghib, time is a scarce resource. \u201cInterception buys time,\u201d he says. \u201cBut time matters only if you use it to change the system upstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mr Hermitianta, the risk is structural. Without alignment between policy, infrastructure and community ownership, Bali risks cycling endlessly between crisis response and short-lived reform.<\/p>\n
What effective waste management looks like, then, is deliberately unremarkable: waste separated at source, local recyclers supported, landfills used sparingly, data shared and responsibilities clearly assigned.<\/p>\n
In Bali, the most meaningful shift may not be whether waste disappears altogether, but whether the systems built to manage it are finally allowed to hold.<\/p>\n