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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In terms of technical aspect, we believe everyone’s roles in waste management system is crucial, as well as enhanced technical and organizational capacities necessary for achieving the national targets, including community, waste collectors, government, and other stakeholders. This includes ensuring proper documents of guidance or procedures to be in place and fully implemented by waste collectors and community, training and regular assistance for the anyone involved in waste management system that is in line with the national waste management policy as stipulated in Waste Management Act 18/2008, and communication platform for all relevant stakeholders to catch up with the latest technologies and sharing best practices in other areas or fields.

Our main programs are as follow.

• Collaborative planning of waste management system in small islands with all relevant stakeholders, from local government to community level.
• Door-to-door education on waste segregation, followed by settling on commitment made by local figures or leaders to maintain the enthusiasm to implement waste segregation at source.
• Close assistance for waste collectors on segregated waste collection, to make sure that segregated waste at household level stays separated until respective waste category reaches their end point of waste handling, for instance, putting organic waste in their own bins so it could be fully composted.
• Regular monitoring of the implementation of the waste management system as per agreed at the planning phase as well as evaluation and improvement.
• Engaging students and local shops to promote reduction of single-use plastic through a series of workshop.

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Kepulauan Seribu has a unique characteristic that requires an out-of-the-box approach to solve marine debris issues. Located in the capital city with 2-hour away with speedboat from the shoreline, Kepulauan Seribu gain tracts from many businesses and NGOs as well as media. The challenges faced in Kepulauan Seribu reflect the ones in other small islands across Indonesia, which are mainly large hurdles in waste transport to the landfill. Regional spending requires a large amount every year at approximately Rp 20 billion for the implementation of the waste management system in Kepulauan Seribu that ships 6,000 tons of waste every month. As such, Kepulauan Seribu is a good example for other small islands to learn upon since Kepulauan Seribu receives tons of marine debris drifted away from Java Island every day. This challenge is not up for one single institution to solve, so Yayasan KEHATI and Divers Clean Action initiated the multi-stakeholder communication forum to gain scattered resources and potential for further collaboration in order to achieve our national targets (Jakstranas) by 30% waste reduction by 2025.

Our lessons learned are compiled and based on our needs identified in the multi-stakeholder forum, we would set out for developing a roadmap of waste management system in Kepulauan Seribu, as a practical guidance for all stakeholders engaged in allocating resources for implementation of the waste management system. The roadmap document is necessary to put our activities mainstreamed into acquiring our ultimate goal in the coming years, and to serve as guideline for any institution or individual to plan their activities in relation to the pertaining issues on the ground. It is expected for all relevant stakeholders, national and local government, businesses, universities, NGOs, and communities to be actively engaged and have similar perception toward the needs of collaborative roadmap and a multi-stakeholder forum to allow them to have information exchange and collaborate.

Divers Clean Action is committed to facilitate the dialogues in hopes for solutions to the mismanaged waste issues leading to damaged marine ecosystems in Kepulauan Seribu.

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We find a lot of products sold in supermarkets packaged in single-use plastic, paper, aluminium cans, glasses, etc, that are also easily found floating on the rivers or at the bottom of the sea, due to its short lifespan and single use only for its entire lifecycle. Based on the data analyzed from our clean-up activities from 2016-2019, 64% of marine debris found is single-use plastic. Flexible plastic that is mostly found in packaging sachets are small in size and light-weight, so it is easily escaped from our waste management system, coupled with the low waste collection rate and high use of plastic sachets in almost all products. We are hurt when we see a lot of marine animals are entangled by our own waste on the news, and increasing waves of single-use plastic does not seem to stop any time soon. Divers Clean Action initiated a refill store, where consumers have the options to avoid the single-use plastic in sachets and to shift to more sustainable alternative, which is reusable containers to refill the household products. Cura’ refill store was first opened in Pramuka Island, Kepulauan Seribu in February 2020, and a year later another branch was opened in Harapan Island. The business model engages local kiosks and suppliers of the household products to reduce their waste across the supply chain, as well as consumers to opt for an eco-friendlier shopping experience. Experiences and lessons learned gathered during Cura’ business set-up and operational would be compiled and presented to FMCG manufacturing companies as part of the support to businesses to rapidly leave business-as-usual practices involving single-use plastic. We are pushing for more collaboration in this sector to improve the closed-loop supply chain and redesign of packaging to combat marine debris.

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Kepulauan Seribu is one of 10 Kawasan Strategi Pariwisata Nasional (National Strategic Tourism Areas) in Indonesia since 2016 and is within the location of National Park. Approximately 600,000 tourists visited Kepulauan Seribu in 2019, and undeniably, mass tourism that happens in Kepulauan Seribu as an example brings forth negative impacts toward marine ecosystems and the local culture. Our collaboration, including Yayasan KEHATI, University of Pancasila, Divers Clean Action, and Pokdarwis, the local agency made of all tour providers in the islands, to collectively counteract the negative effects and conserve the marine environment. Following are our principles of sustainable tourism in Program SOSIS.

• Community participation Community is placed as one of the most important stakeholders whose interest and concrete roles and potentials in maintaining the natural ecosystems underwater as well as the local culture, as tour guides are the bridge between tourists and local communities. In Program SOSIS we work together with Pokdarwis to conceptualize community-led sustainable marine tourism with affordable tour packages.
• Nature conservation and education Conservation and education on natural ecosystem and culture preservation around the islands are among the principles used to developing the concept of sustainable marine tourism as well as being as standard to provide high service quality to tourists. In particular, mangrove planting in Harapan Island and sea turtle conservation area in Pramuka Island by National Park of Kepulauan Seribu.
• Less waste We have to actively respond to alarming marine debris issue which may endanger their sustainability of the tourism in Kepulauan Seribu and the conservation efforts. Pokdarwis and waste bank in Harapan Island are working together to provide less waste service for tourists, by eliminating single-use plastic in food and drinks, and involving them to beach and underwater clean-ups.
• Collaboration and strong commitment We highly regard collaboration and strong commitment as the main key to realizing our vision together, which is preserving the underwater beauty of Kepulauan Seribu. All stakeholders are invited and engaged to participate in our regular dialogues, including businesses, government, NGOs, universities, industry associations, and communities.

We are striving for harmony and collaboration with all stakeholders to actualize eco-tourism in Kepulauan Seribu that drives natural ecosystem conservation, waste reduction at source, and education for both tourists and tour providers.

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