Do you need a bag?
“Do you need a bag? They’re 7 cents,” the cashier asks once he’s scanned the last tin.
Not really. But the car is over the road. And it’s starting to rain. You’ll remember your reusable one next time.
“Yes please”.
A plastic bag floating near the shore, Bangka Island.
Every day we collect dozens of plastic bags from the coastline of Bangka Island. Like in most countries, they are easily available here and loosely regulated. Indonesia is thought to produce 85,000 tonnes of plastic bags a year (Wijaya, B.S et al, 2020). This is reflected in their significant contribution to the non-recyclable waste we collect (which accounts for 40% of all waste) (No-Trash Triangle Initiative, 2020).
We dig out the ones half-buried by sand and fish out the ones covered with algae in rockpools. If we didn’t, the coast would be flooded by them. Before long, they’d fragment and enter the food chain. All we can do is collect them and send them to landfill in Manado because they cannot be recycled here.
Bangka isn’t unusual in this respect; this is a problem faced across the Coral Triangle.
We know, there’s nothing particularly interesting about plastic bags themselves. They are just a by-product of a boring part of our day; walking home from the shops. Understandably, many people aren’t passionate about straws or bottles either. We ignore these objects because they are mundane, and in doing so we are ignoring their contribution to environmental destruction.
Trillions per Year
As a No-Trash Triangle supporter, you know that plastic bags are a topic at the forefront of the pollution crisis. You may even know that worldwide, we use trillions of plastic bags a year. Estimates vary, from over one to five trillion (Bombelli, P. et al, 2017), (The World Counts, 2020).
Take a moment to sit with this counter.
It allows us to understand these astronomical figures, as we witness the rate of production (The World Counts, 2020).
Approximately one in a hundred of all bags produced is recycled (The World Counts, 2020). The best-case scenario is that the other ninety-nine made it to landfill, and we all know this is extremely unlikely. Even if they did, simply burying trillions of bags in landfills is far from being a viable long-term solution.
In fact, this counter seems to be based on underestimations the current rate. Plastic usage has increased considerably during the Coronavirus pandemic due to concerns over the hygiene of reusables (Tenenbaum, 2020). That means more plastic bags than ever will find their way into The Coral Triangle.
From Bangka To Barrang Lompo
The No-Trash Triangle Initiative collects data as well as plastic. Here we describe how our operation works, and why studies on marine pollution, however small, are important.
In 2019, we found that of the trash we collected, 22% (by weight) was single-use plastic (No- Trash Triangle Initiative, 2020). Our findings are specific to our previously unstudied location, but they do not address specific items, like plastic bags. To do that, we need to look elsewhere in Indonesia.
On the opposite side of Sulawesi, off the coast of Makassar, lies Barrang Lompo. In 2018, this island hosted a collaboration of universities from Indonesia and America, plus local schoolchildren. Like the No-Trash Triangle Initiative, expert environmental education was central to the operation. Between them, they managed to reveal the role of plastic bags in Indonesian marine pollution (Sur et al, 2018).
Barang Lompo is described as a ‘typical inhabited Indonesian small island’, ‘densely populated’, and ‘swamped with debris but off the tourist radar’. Sadly, this all adds up to ‘almost knee-high levels of debris along the shoreline’ (Sur et al 2018).
The researchers and pupils waded into the trash to take samples from transects. They then calculated the proportion of the volume of debris from different items. The results showed that plastic bags accounted for 20% of the volume of debris, by far the most from a specific item (Sur et al 2018).
Plastic bags account for 20% of the volume of debris.
The proportions of marine debris, calculated by volume, from samples taken from the coast of Barrang Lompo. Plastic bags are shown to make up 0.2 (or 20%) of the volume. (Image directly from Sur et al, 2018)
This study confirms what we already knew; plastic bags are polluting Indonesia on a horrendous scale. If these results are applicable elsewhere, we could cut out one-fifth of marine debris by just tackling one product.
An item by item level of understanding of marine pollution shapes the campaigns that change laws.
It is crucial.
Something must change, so what is being done?
A common suggestion for reducing plastic bag use is to introduce a charge. In 2016, 23 cities across Indonesia tested that idea, by charging 200 IDR (or 0.012 Euro) per bag. There was concern among environmentalists that this cost was too low to have an effect, but 3 months later, plastic bag use was down by 55%.
It was a good start, but unfortunately, that’s all it was. The government rolled back the charge because of concerns for retail (Garcia de Oliveira, et al 2019).
Sub-national governments went further. In June that year, Banjarmasin city took the decisive step to ban plastic bags in retail. It is estimated that this law saves Indonesia from the headache of 52 million plastic bags per month (Garcia de Oliveira et al 2019).
These are positive steps by the national and sub-national government, but the way for them was paved by the public. That’s because two sisters, aged 10 and 12, brought about dramatic change two years before. That story begins in 2013, in Bali, one of the most visited destinations on earth (Global Destination Cities Index, 2019).
Bye Bye Plastic Bags
In hindsight, this project is considered a turning point in Indonesian environmentalism.
The Wijsen sisters knew something had to be done about the plastic ‘swallowing up’ Bali. So, while still at school, they established the Bye Bye Plastic Bags NGO and launched campaigns and petitions to pressurise their government.
Melati and Isabel Wijsen deliver their TED talk in London. (Image via Bamboo News Magazine, 2015).
The campaign has seen a meteoric rise in the past 7 years, spearheading culturally significant moments including the governor of Bali signing a memorandum (in 2014) to commit to a plastic bag free province by 2018, a TED talk in London (Bamboo News Magazine, 2015), a declaration of an environmental emergency in Bali (2017), and clean-ups that removed tons of plastic from the coast (Garcia de Oliveira et al, 2019).
It went even further in 2019, as Bali banned not just plastic bags, but all single-use items (Gapura, 2019). This campaign is now taken globally as an example of a grassroots environmental movement making a real impact.
We contacted Bye Bye Plastic Bags, to ask how they achieved such positive change.
‘We feel that Bye Bye Plastic Bags is where it is today because of the passionate young people [in our] team. We have always been a youth-led campaign, and this was one of the most successful parts of BBPB because we were always creative, full of energy and never gave up.’
As momentous as this change is, Bali is only one corner of the Coral Triangle. It is also far from a ‘typical Indonesian Island’ like Barrang Lompo. There is no doubt that the huge tourism industry in the area was crucial to the reforms.
When asked if their success could be replicated beyond Bali, they said:
‘Yes of course! we already have 50 locations around the world in 29 countries. In Indonesia, we have teams in Bali, Jakarta, Bogor, Malang, Batam, Bandung, Makassar.’
If you’d like to get involved, look here the list of locations, around the world, that Bye Bye Plastic Bags operates from.
Things Cannot Continue as They Are
For many citizens of the Coral Triangle, not enough has been done. The marine pollution crisis is unlike many other environmental issues because it is so tangible. If you live in a fishing village, every tide signals how effective, or ineffective, our efforts are.
It’s not all down to reforms and campaigns. There are some interesting developments in alternative materials, which we will cover in another post. But relying on inventions and businesses will not help in the short term.
To be clear, we are not trying to blame the people of Indonesia. A very similar post could be written about a dozen other countries. But in Indonesia, the stakes are particularly high. It forms the body of the Coral Triangle which is the global home of marine biodiversity. Its ‘mismanages’ the second-highest volume of plastic in the world, which results in marine debris (Jambeck et al, 2015). Its economy depends upon the tourism sector, and there are only so many trashed beaches a tourist can see before they decide to look for a ‘pristine’ destination next year. Things cannot continue as they are.
When we feel inspired by the big topics of climate change, habitat loss, and marine pollution, we must take that interest with us when we zero in on the specifics.