Systems Change and Integration Toward Circular Economy
For these past few years, the residents of Kepulauan Seribu have growing interests in waste segregation, especially recyclable waste with increasing community’s initiatives in bank sampah or waste bank, which are in line with national targets in increasing circularity (reducing waste, recycling and keeping materials in use) by 30% by 2025 as stipulated in Presidential Regulation 97/2017 on National Strategic Policy in Household Waste Management. Achieving the goal requires long-standing collaboration between all stakeholders, including government, businesses, universities, non-profit organizations and community, as well as systemic change in how waste is perceived and handled. The ultimate objective of waste management must be directed toward regenerative system, which shifts our perspectives that waste is the cheaper and more sustainable alternative of resources.
Divers Clean Action with project partners work together to enable the systemic change with bottom-up approaches that are initiated with small scale initiatives, led by communities. These initiatives are then put in piece by piece together, so we could identify their main challenges and best practices that may be the alternative solutions for others in doing the same field of work. We promote dialogues between many institutions and individuals using interactive methods, for instance, the needs of switching to equipment with larger capacity for segregated waste collection are addressed by waste collectors on the ground to Environment Agency. Additionally, we provide door-to-door education on waste segregation so that everyone is made aware of the rising issue and is capable of implementing waste segregation at source in order to expand the scale of the impacts. Coupled with our comprehensive efforts in engaging local communities, our policy and regional program advocacy is constantly progressing to place regulatory foundation for the systemic change we are trying to induce.
Main keys to unlock the shift toward circular economy is public awareness, stakeholder engagement, and strengthening the technical and organizational capacity of the institutions and individuals to play their roles and responsibilities within the waste management system. We have to dare broaden our perspectives that managing waste within the circularity principles could be the answer to the detrimental marine debris to marine and coastal ecosystems as well as our exhaustive resource mining and use.
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