Waste is one of the first issues that comes to mind when discussing environmental challenges in Indonesia.
The evidence makes the reason understandable. A World Bank study estimated that Indonesia generates approximately 7.8 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, with around 4.9 million tonnes mismanaged under the study's methodology. Importantly, the research found that uncollected waste contributes more to plastic leakage than waste escaping from final disposal sites.
That changes how we should think about the problem.
It is easy to frame plastic pollution primarily as a consumer issue: people use too much plastic, litter too much or do not recycle enough.
But a plastic bottle cannot be recycled if there is no reliable system to collect it.
And collection alone is not enough if sorting is uneconomic, recycling facilities lack feedstock, recycled material has insufficient market value or municipal governments lack the capacity and financing to operate the system sustainably.
Indonesia's waste challenge is therefore better understood as a system, not a single environmental problem.
Collection connects to sorting. Sorting connects to recycling. Recycling depends on markets. Markets depend partly on product design, regulation and producer behaviour. Local governments need infrastructure and financing. Communities need incentives that work in daily life.
This also explains why there is already so much activity in the sector.
Government programmes, municipalities, NGOs, multinational companies, startups, development organizations and community initiatives are all working on different elements of Indonesia's waste ecosystem. The World Bank approved another US$350 million project in December 2025 aimed at strengthening solid-waste services and infrastructure, beginning with 30 local governments and potentially benefiting more than 15 million people.
This is good news.
But for an international organization considering entering Indonesia, it creates a more difficult strategic question.
Do we actually need another waste initiative?
The answer may sometimes be no.
Launching another awareness campaign, pilot recycling project or branded clean-up activity can generate visibility without necessarily addressing the structural reason waste continues to accumulate.
The more useful question is:
Where is the system currently breaking down despite all the activity already taking place?
- Perhaps the gap is collection economics in underserved areas.
- Perhaps it is organic waste rather than plastic.
- Perhaps municipal capability.
- Perhaps reliable data and traceability.
- Perhaps a viable market for recycled materials.
- Perhaps integrating informal waste workers into higher-value systems.
- Perhaps tourism-related waste in destinations such as Bali.
Or perhaps the problem is not a lack of projects at all, but difficulty turning successful pilots into financially sustainable systems that can operate at scale.
Those are hypotheses that should be investigated rather than assumed.
What could European organizations contribute?
This is where international expertise can still matter.
European organizations may bring circular-economy knowledge, technology, financing models, product-design expertise, research or connections to global value chains.
The Netherlands in particular already has active cooperation with Indonesia around circular economy and waste management.
But the objective should not be to reproduce a Dutch waste model in Jakarta or Bali.
Indonesia has different infrastructure, economics, behaviours, informal-sector dynamics, governance structures and geographic realities.
The stronger approach is:
international capability + Indonesian knowledge + local implementation.
That may sound less dramatic than "solving Indonesia's plastic problem."
It is also considerably more realistic.
For organizations interested in entering Indonesia's environmental sector, perhaps the greatest opportunity is not to create more noise around a highly visible problem.
It is to identify the part of the system everyone can see is important — but nobody has yet managed to make work reliably.
That missing link is where the real opportunity may be.