Jakarta. People of all ages living in the foothills of the Sibayak mountain  —particularly in Gundaling I, Berastagi— are bartering their trash for groceries at the Mela Melket waste bank.

One of these residents is Ester Boru Sinaga, a stay-at-home mom with a daughter who works as a janitor at a tourist spot in Gundaling, Berastagi. All the hard work cleaning the tourist site in Gundaling has finally paid off because the family can use the collected trash as a currency for groceries.

“I’m glad that I can have groceries like rice, cooking oil, sugar, eggs, and so on by exchanging waste at the Mela Melket,” Ester said, as quoted from a recent press release.

This waste barter program, conducted by the Berastagi plant of mineral water producer AQUA (Tirta  Sibayakindo) in partnership with Cipta Fondasi Komunitas, has collected a total of 900 kilograms of waste. 

“AQUA Berastagi plant’s waste management initiative by inviting people to collect and sort their waste, while also taking them to Melma Melket waste bank has paved the way for a cleaner environment. This has also become a solution to reduce the accumulation of waste in landfills,” Radius Tarigan, the head of the environmental department at the Karo Regency, said.

Radius said that the government hoped other businesses could also come up with an initiative. According to Esron Siringoringo, the stakeholder relations manager at the Berastagi AQUA plant, all the collected waste would be taken to the main waste bank from Belawan and Lubuk Pakam for further processing.

“We hope that the community will continue to be motivated and accustomed to collecting and sorting waste because it can bring economic benefits to the community," Esron said.

Until end-2022, the Mela Melket Gundaling I waste bank has “served” 101 heads of the family. The waste bank has also collected 1.6 tons of plastic waste, and 2.1 tons of non-plastic economic waste.

The process of collecting, sorting, and managing waste into items that can be reused is a cycle that brings economic benefits. That is the circular economy model that has been developed by Danone-AQUA in various regions in Indonesia.

According to the release, Danone-AQUA is also using packaging with up to 25 percent of recycled PET (rPET) content. It is also the first company in Indonesia to have a 100-percent recycled PET plastic bottle.

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