The sibling trio turning Bali's river trash into sandals and furniture
Indonesia ranks as one of the world's biggest contributors to ocean plastics, and a lot of it comes from rivers. The local nonprofit Sungai Watch saves about 3 metric tons of trash from entering the ocean every day with simple barriers and manual labor. We visited the island of Bali to meet the three young siblings behind the nonprofit and learn why a tropical paradise has a huge trash problem.
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00:00Indonesia has some of the dirtiest rivers in the world.
00:06And this team races against the clock to remove trash from them by hand.
00:11This is an emergency.
00:12A resident living along this river sent a video, and we're here trying to clean it up.
00:17The next rain can wash this river plastic straight into the ocean, where it will be
00:21nearly impossible to collect.
00:25The non-profit Sungai Watch has cleaned up over 2,000 tons of trash across Bali and East
00:30Java in just four years.
00:33We get so much random stuff from like dildos to like condoms.
00:42They partner with other companies to recycle the trash and turn it into sandals and chairs.
00:48But why is Indonesia covered in so much trash?
00:52Do Indonesia's manual cleanups really make a difference?
00:57Today, the non-profit is taking a team of 30 people to clean up a river near a seaside
01:02village in southern Bali.
01:04Gary started the organization with his two siblings, Sam and Kelly, in 2020.
01:09But they've been living in Bali since they were children.
01:12We saw Bali go from this beautiful paradise 20 years ago when we moved here to a plastic-filled island.
01:20The island actually banned single-use plastics, like bags and straws, in 2019.
01:26But some studies say that Bali still makes more than 300,000 metric tons of plastic waste
01:32every year.
01:34Everything here in Indonesia is wrapped in these little single-use sashes.
01:37So easy to use, you know, one-time use, and it's so money-use culture.
01:44This is some trees and a bridge that have stopped all this floating debris.
01:50And this will just keep on accumulating until, potentially, a flood will come about.
02:01All of this waste was cleaned up in about three hours.
02:06It's always hard to say, but this looks like about two tons, two tons of waste.
02:12All of this is essentially plastic that was making its way to the ocean.
02:18What most people will see as trash, we actually see this as value.
02:23It's like modern-day mining.
02:24We're looking for the most valuable piece of trash.
02:27And right now what we'll do with this is we'll put it on the back of our pickup trucks and
02:31ship it over to our sorting center, which is 10 minutes away.
02:36The non-profit has nine sorting facilities across Bali and East Java.
02:41This is our sorting room.
02:43We sort about what comes in today, what we sort tomorrow, at least that's the idea.
02:48And they handle about 3,000 kilos of plastic waste every day.
02:52They're really sorting everything manually, little gritties.
02:56They sort it all into 30 different categories according to material, color, and quality.
03:02Every single day, it's a multitude for us to collect data and to then start to look
03:05at the brands behind it.
03:07The most recyclable items, like plastic bottles, are sold to recyclers.
03:14Workers like Kadek Arianto use the baler to compress recyclable materials into solid bricks
03:20that are easier to transport.
03:22They repress up to 1,000 plastic bottles into each 25-kilo cube.
03:38But only about a third of the waste Sungai Watch collects can be recycled by external
03:41facilities.
03:43So the team had to get creative with the rest.
03:47So actually one of the biggest sets of plastics that we collect is flip-flops.
03:51To address this problem, they've partnered with a company named Indosol to turn piles
03:55of discarded sandals into new sandals.
03:59They're long-standing friends.
04:01We've cleaned many rivers together, and it was just a match in heaven.
04:05Sungai Watch has brought in over 200,000 sandals since it started, about 3% of its
04:11total waste.
04:13At Indosol's factory, the trash is ground down and heated in a mixer.
04:19The mixture is then placed into a mold,
04:24pressed,
04:30and left to sit for about 12 hours.
04:33After we then have a complete block of foam, we will then skive down to sheets, which we
04:39will then cut and press into the footbeds of the Sungai Watch x Indosol sandals.
04:45The recycled sandal material is used for the midsole, while the footbeds are made of a
04:50mixture of natural and synthetic rubbers.
04:53A recycled polyester strap is added to complete the sandal.
04:57The recipe for each color is a little different.
05:00The sea salt version, which I'm currently wearing, which is this one, has sandals here
05:06in the middle midsole.
05:09It's pretty dirty right now because I've been wearing it on and on.
05:12For each sandal that Sungai Watch pulls out of a river, Indosol is able to make a new one.
05:18The siblings also launched another company in 2024 called Sungai Design.
05:23It buys plastic bags collected by the non-profit and turns them into furniture.
05:29This design is a lounge chair that is made up of many different pieces, but all made
05:34from 2,000 plastic bags collected in Indonesia's rivers.
05:38This is the first product of Sungai Design.
05:41But about 40% of the waste goes to landfills because it's too degraded or too difficult
05:46to recycle.
05:47Still, Gary sees every piece they remove from rivers as a win.
05:52And all the data they've been collecting is valuable too.
05:56That is really important for us to be able to relay this data to the government.
06:00So we push policy around wrapping with single-use plastics and the recyclability of it.
06:08Indonesia produces nearly 7 million metric tons of plastic waste each year, and more
06:13than half of that is mismanaged.
06:16So much of the waste here in Bali ends up on roadsides, in poorly regulated landfills,
06:21and at illegal dump sites like this one.
06:24Sungai Watch sends out a team to clean up these places every Friday.
06:29When plastic enters a river, it typically comes from sort of these illegal landfills.
06:35The local waste problem isn't new.
06:37A 2015 study ranked Indonesia as the second biggest contributor to marine plastic pollution
06:43in the world.
06:44The problem got worse after 2017, when China announced that it would stop accepting waste
06:49from other countries.
06:50This led many neighboring countries to accept more, a lot more.
06:55Indonesia's plastic waste imports spiked in 2018.
06:59This all led to the government setting an ambitious goal to reduce marine plastic waste
07:04by 70% by 2025.
07:07But Gary isn't holding his breath.
07:10Waste sorting stations are opened, and in a couple years they are closed down due to
07:16lack of funding and lack of operation.
07:20Meanwhile, the local waste problem has gotten so bad that it's caught international media
07:24attention.
07:25Bali is known to the world as the island of gods, but recently, you know, with international
07:30media covering this trash epidemic, the plastic waves washing up on Kuta Beach, it's now known
07:36as the island of trash.
07:39That's why Sungai Watch installed 170 floating barriers like this one across Bali and East
07:44Java.
07:45The barriers trap most of the plastic in one place, but they have to visit each site every
07:50day to stop trash from piling up.
08:02Mader Bagi used to be a taxi driver, but during the pandemic, he quit his job to focus on
08:06the environment.
08:16The non-profit experimented with a dozen different models before arriving at this simple and
08:22scalable design.
08:24After the trash is bagged, the team weighs the day's haul.
08:32They record the date, barrier location, and total weight at each cleanup.
08:36They also take a before and after picture.
08:46The non-profit has a team of 132 people working at barriers, dump sites, and sorting centers
09:04across the island every day.
09:05What we're doing in rivers is really non-stop.
09:10Every single day, we'll clean a river, and then the very next day, more trash will end
09:13up.
09:14That's the kind of thing that we're going against.
09:18One of their biggest inspirations was the Ocean Cleanup, which we actually covered in
09:222023.
09:24It's a Dutch non-profit that has removed more than 200,000 kilos of trash from the Pacific
09:28and learned some really important lessons about how to manage ocean plastic.
09:35The founder, Boyan Slat, started off harnessing natural currents to collect floating debris
09:39inside a giant U-shaped barrier.
09:43But over the years, they realized that to really make a dent, they had to get closer
09:46to the source, rivers.
09:49So they invented these big machines that capture waste before it ever makes it to the open
09:53waters.
09:54They're called interceptors, and the founder plans to deploy 1,000 of them.
10:00We filmed with the organization after they installed one at the Rio Osama in the Dominican
10:05Republic, which flows into the Caribbean Sea.
10:08It's one of the dirtiest rivers in the world.
10:11And Carmen Encarnacion has lived nearby for 24 years.
10:19The Ocean Cleanup installed an interceptor about a mile down the river from her home
10:23in 2020.
10:29The idea is to let the current do most of the work.
10:32As trash travels downstream, this 700-foot long arm redirects it toward the machine's
10:37opening.
10:38What the barriers do is they let the water pass, but they stop everything that's floating.
10:44On the roof, we have these solar panels that are connected to batteries, which store the
10:50energy so that even at night, we can keep intercepting plastic.
10:57Conveyor belts carry the waste to one of six dumpsters.
11:00They can fill up in just three days during the rainy season.
11:04Boeing started out hoping to clean the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but it turns
11:09out it's not really a patch.
11:11It's actually two swirling clouds of debris, which often aren't visible on the surface.
11:17Natural currents have created five whirlpools like it around the world, called gyres, and
11:23each one collects trash.
11:25And there's still a garbage truck's worth of plastic entering the ocean every minute,
11:30on average.
11:31The scale of the whole thing makes ocean plastic removal practically impossible.
11:38This plastic doesn't stay in the big pieces.
11:40It ends up in teeny tiny pieces that are impossible to manage.
11:47If there's a way to stop that from entering the system and becoming the minuscule particles
11:53that we'll never be able to manage, we need to do it now.
11:57Ultimately, restoring a polluted ecosystem requires big changes.
12:02The best way to keep plastic out of rivers and oceans is to make less of it.
12:06But Gary still believes change is possible.
12:08We simply do a lot of educational sessions here with local communities.
12:13We do workshops teaching local youth and women how to sort.
12:19And they've had a few real wins.
12:21They've worked with local government to identify heavily polluted areas.
12:25In 2017, a community in Denpasar released fish back into a river deemed clean enough
12:29to have the trash barriers removed.
12:32The group is also partnering with two other NGOs to develop an educational program about
12:36plastic waste reduction.
12:39They also publish an annual report on the trash they've cleaned and have begun consulting
12:44the national government on wider environmental policy.
12:48Why are we doing this every day is because we truly believe that Bali can be free of
12:52plastic.
12:53It will probably take a couple years, but we hope to get there.