“When women are financially secure, they have more negotiating power,” says the 38-year-old entrepreneur. Women in Bantar Gebang tend to be married at 14 or 15 and are not financially independent. Their husbands leave them, forcing many of them to raise their children alone or return to their parents’ homes, perpetuating the cycle of poverty, Bonnard says.
Life on the dump is hard enough: Most live in unstable housing with poor sanitation and are prone to illnesses like diarrhea and respiratory infections. Scavenging is a dangerous job, exposing pickers to landslides, overturned excavators, and lightning strikes. Last year, methane plumes spewing from the dump ignited, poisoning the air for miles around.
Scavengers work at the ever-expanding Bantar Gebang landfill, which spans 110 hectares. 7,000 tons of garbage are added to the 40 million tons of garbage landfill every day. Photo: Alliance Palawan Sampa Perempuan
Children in Bantar Gebang, like Bonard, often drop out of school because they are bullied for smelling like garbage. “People who live in the dump are always underestimated. We are considered the lowest class,” she says. Bonnard, who was nicknamed the “Dump Princess” during her student days, runs a charity that helps children called The Seeds of Bantar Gebang (BGBJ). But the hostel and education center she ran on the dump will be bulldozed in 2022 to make way for a refuse-derived fuel (RDF) facility. Her sources say RDF facilities tend to break down. “Maybe it’s karma,” she says.
Her latest business, which she runs in a village six kilometers from Bantar Gebang, helps women waste collectors sell recyclable waste directly to buyers, bypassing the middleman “bosses.” Waste middlemen control much of the trade in the valuable waste recovered from dumps, paying waste collectors many times less for the waste they collect than they sell it for.
For example, middlemen buy PET, the most commonly traded recycled plastic, from waste collectors for Rp 700-1,500 (4-9 US cents) per kilogram and sell it to recyclers for Rp 6-9,000 (37-55 US cents) per kilogram. Lower-value plastics such as sachets are purchased for Rp 300-500 (1-3 US cents) per kilogram and processed into flakes for sale. upon It sells for about 3,000 rupiah (18 US cents) per kilogram, but the amount that waste collectors can earn from low-value plastic is so low that it is usually not collected.
Middlemen also have a monopoly on key information, such as the price of plastic and changes in market demand, which they do not share with waste collectors, who can dictate the terms of trade. “Limited access to market information and inefficient systems perpetuate a vicious cycle of low wages for waste collectors and an under-realization of the full potential of recyclable materials,” says Alvaro Aguilar, founder of Ecologis. Together with Bonard, Ecologis is developing a mobile app that will allow waste collectors to sell their goods directly to recyclers. The app will also give waste collectors access to up-to-date market information.
Bonard’s organization also plans to provide financial literacy training to female waste pickers so they can open bank accounts and get microloans. Many women in Bantar Gebang turn to loan sharks when they get into financial trouble, pushing them deeper into poverty. After a conference in Bantar Gebang last month to introduce the concept, the Women’s Garbage Heroes Alliance signed up 340 women as members.
Resa Bonard stands at the foot of a pile of garbage at the Bantar Gebang landfill. Image: Alliance Palawan Sampa Perempuan
Bonnard acknowledges the risks of bypassing middlemen who wield power at landfills: There will inevitably be resistance to the idea from more traditional thinkers in the waste industry, which Aguilar likens to the initial backlash that ride-hailing apps faced from taxi drivers.
Men who attended the alliance’s meetings expressed interest in the idea, including some brokers. Either way, Bornard is not one to shy away from a fight. For two years, she fought the government to be evicted from her hostel on reclaimed land, which she claims belongs to her parents. “People know me. I’m tough and I fight hard,” she says.
But Bonnard isn’t trying to make any enemies, and instead wants to encourage women to continue selling their collections through intermediaries as well as the app, in the hope that eventually the intermediaries will start using the app too.
“Taxi drivers initially protested against Grab and Gojek, but eventually they became part of the system,” Aguilar said.
Companies that could potentially buy materials through the platform include consumer goods companies like Unilever, Coca-Cola and Danone, which have pledged to use more recycled plastic in their packaging. Currently, brands pay recyclers for recycled plastic to meet their Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) or “polluter pays” commitments, but this money rarely trickles down to waste collectors, Aguilar said. He added that companies making one-off donations to places like Bantar Gebang is counterproductive because it breaks the recycling value chain.
“Companies may spend $10,000 on sustainability initiatives, but then continue to use virgin plastic. [instead of recycled plastic] “Anyway, they’re focused on public relations and appearances and not looking after the people who do the actual work of collecting waste,” he says.
Female waste collectors make up about 40 percent of the landfill’s workforce. Image: Aliansi Pahlawan Sampah Perempuan
Bantar Gebang intermediaries are also rarely included in EPR schemes and are more likely to justify the partnership if they perceive greater access to big brand buyers through the platform.If the platform is successful, it could be rolled out to other cities in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
Bonnard says resistance from middlemen will come from suspicions that women waste collectors will threaten the status quo by taking away their share of the circular economy. But once the scheme gets up and running and starts to scale, it’s likely to open up market opportunities for all players in the system. Waste collectors will have access to incentives such as plastic credits and EPR funds, which could help increase recycling rates by making collecting low-value plastics more valuable.
“We’re not taking money from anybody. We’re creating value,” she says.
