Destinations known | Bali is not an eco-tourism destination – but plans are in place to drastically reduce marine plastic pollution

According to a recent survey conducted by Britain’s YouGov and Cambridge University, 18 per cent of Indonesians believe that the climate is changing “but human activity is not responsible at all”. Coming from one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases and the second biggest contributor to ocean pollution, with a capital that could be wiped off the map by 2050 by rising sea levels, this attitude is more than a little concerning.

On June 20, Reuters reported that “only 48 per cent of Bali’s trash is managed responsibly through recycling or landfill, according to a five-month study by the Bali Partnership”. The rest is burned or dumped in waterways and the ocean, resulting in 33,000 tonnes of plastic pollution ending up in the sea annually. That’s the equivalent in weight to 2,609 double-decker buses.

The Bali Partnership, an organisation created to help Indonesia reduce ocean plastics by 70 per cent by 2025, and supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also found that each of the island’s annual 16 million tourists – about six million of whom are from overseas – generates 3.5 times more waste per day than a local resident. In total, they account for 13 per cent of Bali’s total waste.

There are green initiatives already in place – 400 of them, according to the Bali Partnership’s research – but activities need to be expanded to areas where the need is greatest, to maximise the environmental impact. If it were to focus its efforts on just 15 of Bali’s 57 subdistricts, the organisation estimates that the amount of plastic pollution finding its way into Bali’s waters could be reduced by 44 per cent. To achieve this, “the Bali Partnership will raise funding to conduct a pilot using this powerful, multi-stakeholder approach in one of the highest leakage sub-districts”. Whatever that means.