Bali is known worldwide for its beauty, but it is struggling with a growing waste problem. Last year, 33,000 tonnes of plastic waste travelled down Bali’s waterways into the ocean, polluting its vital marine ecosystem. The Bali Partnership Waste Map – the first of its kind globally – is dedicated to sharing how, why and where this is happening.
The Bali Partnership, an initiative supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in partnership with Udayana University, and SYSTEMIQ today announces the launch of the Bali Partnership Waste Map, a tool to visualise the origin and fate of Bali’s waste, accessible at balipartnership.org in Bahasa Indonesia and English.
The Bali Partnership Waste Map allows users to visualise data and build dynamic maps incorporating known data on Bali to answer questions like:
• How is waste managed across Bali’s nine regencies and 57 sub-districts?
• Which sub-districts should be prioritised for waste management interventions?
• What is the total amount of plastic leaking into the ocean from Bali, and how does it vary geographically across the island?
• Which river tributaries are the largest leakage points?
• How many sub-districts’ waste management would need to be improved to reach 90%, 70% and 50% Bali ocean plastic leakage reduction goals?
• Who is working on ocean plastic and waste management interventions across Bali, where are they working and what are they working on?
• Which organisations can people volunteer or get involved with?
With the Bali Partnership Waste Map, users can view and analyze waste flow, mismanaged waste, recycling rate, recycling facilities, landfill usage, river pollution and administrative boundaries, and do so at different geographic zooms, with just a few clicks. The map consists of five layers – the base map, waste, recycling, landfill and organisations and uses an ArcGIS backbone.
Strong institutional support
Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) has welcomed the new visualisation of the island’s waste problem. “I hope this map can be used to help all stakeholders, including waste activists to be able to develop better waste management efforts in Bali Province”, said Nonvrizal Tahar, Director of Waste Management, MoEF. “We hope this can be an inspiration for other regions to be able to carry out similar activities according to the needs and conditions of each region, as part of efforts to achieve waste management target to handle waste by 30% and reduce ocean plastics by 70% by 2025… Hopefully it will be useful for all of us.”
Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been a key supporter of the partnership. “Bali has embarked on bold efforts to tackle plastic leakage to the environment including to the ocean by improving its waste management system,” said Norwegian Ambassador to Indonesia, Vegard Kaale. “Partnership and joint efforts in building comprehensive ocean plastic and waste management baseline and developing a world class interactive map to showcase the data is a good example of how Bali set a role model on waste management efforts. We hope that the Bali waste management map will be a powerful tool to support the efforts of the government, universities and researchers, organizations and community members in improve waste management system in Bali.”
Mapping the issues and modelling the solutions
Joi Danielson is a Partner at SYSTEMIQ who developed its programme of work around ocean plastics in Asia. “The Bali Partnership map is a powerful tool and a global first. It visualises the origin and fate of Bali’s waste and does so in a way that allows users to dynamically play with the interconnectedness of the data to create ocean plastic and waste management views unique to their needs,” she explained. “This was only possible by bringing together the notable skillsets of experts from Udayana University, the University of Leeds, ISWA, SYSTEMIQ and Bali Governor’s waste management task force with generous support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
The aim of the Bali waste management map is to serve as a vital tool to be used by various ocean plastic and waste management stakeholders as the baseline data that can be used to plan, design and as an effective monitoring tool to measure progress against. “Through the map featured on balipartnership.org, users can view and analyze waste flow, mismanaged waste, recycling rates, recycling facilities, landfill usage and facilities, and they access the latest findings about waste management in Bali with just a few clicks,” said I Putu Gede Adiatmika, Director of Postgraduate, Udayana University in Bali. “We hope that the platform can provide contribution on the efforts to overcome the waste management problems in Bali using data-driven approach that can be accessed by various parties.”
The research was conducted using both primary and secondary data collected across Bali’s 9 regencies by Udayana University in Bali and SYSTEMIQ with the support of DLH (the government environmental agency). The research used several methodologies including 950 household surveys, 235 waste characterisation studies, 50 inland and 50 river litter surveys, and landfill tracking. All available waste master plans and data from all regencies were analysed including Bali waste characterisations from I Made Wahyu Widyarsana and Enri Damanhuri (Institute Technology of Bandung/ITB), tourism data and numerous interviews of the environmental agencies and other government officials, non-governmental organistions, the private sector, associations, the informal recycling sector, and key individuals were conducted.
The data was then applied in a model called the Plastic Pollution Calculator developed by the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) and the University of Leeds. The primary data was collected by University of Udayana in Bali, and SYSTEMIQ with the support of DLH, the government environmental agency.
