MWRP Indonesia: Harnessing the Power of City Governments to Reduce Ocean Plastic Pollution

In Indonesia, single-use plastic products and packaging, notably plastic bags, are substantial contributors to the national plastic waste problem. A sampling of 15 large cities across Indonesia by the World Bank in 2018 revealed that plastic bags constitute one of the largest sources of plastic waste found in waterways, including the Citarum River that runs through Bandung City and the Ciliwung River that runs through Jakarta. With funding from USAID’s Municipal Waste Recycling Program, the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement (GIDKP) is assisting several city and provincial governments with developing and enacting single-use plastic reduction policies to reduce ocean plastic pollution in Greater Jakarta and Bogor, Cimahi, and Bandung cities. GIDKP is creating a new Plastic Free Cities Forum to serve as a peer support group for city government environment departments to design, promote, and enact these single-use plastic reduction policies.

Strengthening Single-Use Plastic Reduction Policies and Campaigns

GIDKP is providing technical assistance on policies, regulations, outreach and educational campaigns, and public communications to city governments that lack the technical capacity necessary to design and implement policies aimed at reducing plastic waste. GIDKP is helping city environment officials to design and execute campaign strategies to educate stakeholder groups and to generate momentum for policy change. To ensure effective public information campaigns, GIDKP is drawing on the expertise of civil society group members, community leaders, and retailers, as well as women and youth. In 2020, GIDKP led an advocacy campaign that resulted in a mandate to use environmentally friendly shopping bags and supported the Jakarta Environmental Agency to develop a plastic bag ban in Jakarta.

Creating a Movement Through a Cities Forum

GIDKP established a Cities Forum to share knowledge, solve problems, support initiatives, and build the waste reduction policy capacity within urban governments. The Cities Forum strengthens the ability of participating local governments to address single-use plastic waste at source through policy reform and serves as a mechanism for regularly monitoring progress of individual cities. In addition, the Cities Forum functions as a platform to disseminate lessons learned and to demonstrate the effectiveness of policy reforms, regulations, and implementation models. GIDKP and the forum advocate to the national government and other Indonesian cities to adopt newly developed policy reforms and practices to reduce the utilization of single-use plastic, particularly plastic bags.