Recent Developments of 3R Activities in Indonesia

Although the regulations on 3R activities are currently enacted, however, in practice, the dominant method for waste handling in Indonesia is still collect-transport-dispose. This creates problems in the landfill sites. Waste banks and TPS3R are a form of community-based 3R activity that is expected by the government to reduce waste that goes to landfill sites. However, previous studies mainly discussed waste banks or TPS3R at the regional level. Therefore, this study seeks to discuss the performance of waste banks and TPS3R at the national level using the latest data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. This study shows that both waste banks and TPS3R contribute to a decrease in waste entering landfills. This study also finds that waste banks perform better than TPS3R in terms of capacity to treat waste, whereas TPS3R performs better than waste banks in operational sustainability. However, there is still a huge amount of waste that cannot be treated by both entities, and the amount of waste continues to increase during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study draws policy recommendations based on these results, such as enhancing the performance of waste banks and TPS3R and increasing public participation in waste separation at the source.