Bali residents are facing growing concern over uncollected trash in the tourist hub, with people increasingly burning rubbish, throwing it into rivers, littering on the roadside, public parks or even in school areas.
Piles of garbage have become a common sight on roadsides. The river has become a favourite dumping spot, with trash uncollected for weeks or even months.
Some people have decided to burn their trash at home or at the nearest empty plot of land from their house, following the latest regulation aimed at limiting the amount of trash sent to the 32ha Suwung landfill in Denpasar, the biggest landfill on the island, before its total closure on Aug 1.
In addition to garbage from Denpasar city, the landfill is also the destination for garbage originating from Badung, Gianyar and Tabanan regencies.
“Burning waste is one of the most dangerous responses to the crisis. It poisons the air our children breathe, releases toxins and destroys the very plastics that could have been recovered and recycled,” said environment activist Gary Bencheghib, the founder of Sungai Watch, an environmental organisation working on trash problem.
However, Bencheghib emphasised that communities could not be blamed for the phenomenon.
“People burn (trash) because they feel they have no other option, and that tells us everything we need to know about the gap in waste collection services,” he said.
“The answer is not to blame communities, but to give them a real alternative.”
The increasing number of people throwing rubbish into the river has also become worrying.
“Bali is at a tipping point. What we are witnessing is not a sudden crisis. It’s the result of decades of waste mismanagement finally becoming impossible to ignore,” Bencheghib said.
“Every river we clean tells the same story – a system that has failed to keep up with how much we consume and how little infrastructure exists to handle it.”
He added that the tragedy is that Bali had always been a place defined by its relationship to water, and today the rivers are carrying plastic to the sea instead of life to rice fields.
Bencheghib said that he is grateful for the progress, especially the single-use plastic bag ban and recent provincial regulations.
However, he said, “what Bali urgently needs is universal waste collection across every village, proper investment in sorting and recycling infrastructure, accountability for producers who flood the island with single-use packaging and a clear end to open dumping and open burning.”
Bali has been in a waste crisis ever since the government decided to close down Suwung Landfill without providing an alternative end destination.
Since April 1, the biggest landfill in Bali has only accepted inorganic waste until its planned total closure in August. — The Jakarta Post/ANN
