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.
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