Bandung Raya's waste emergency becomes the test case for a two-year national deadline

A deadline restated, and sharpened, in Bandung

On Friday, 24 July 2026, Coordinating Minister for Food Affairs Zulkifli Hasan travelled to Bandung to deliver a message he has now made in several forms over several months: open dumping, the practice of depositing waste in the open without engineered containment, treatment, or leachate control, must stop. What made the Bandung appearance distinct was the setting. Rather than a ministerial press conference in Jakarta, Zulhas spoke alongside West Java Governor Dedi Mulyadi in the heart of a region that generates nearly 2,000 tonnes of waste every day, and he attached a firm horizon to the commitment: two years.

"Masalah sampah bukan hanya urusan pemerintah, tetapi urusan kita semua," Zulhas told the audience, a line that translates roughly as waste is not only the government's problem but everyone's. He went on to argue that the economics of the issue run in Indonesia's favor if the system is built correctly. "Kalau sampah dikelola dengan baik, justru bisa menghasilkan energi, pupuk, bahkan bahan bakar," he said, describing well-managed waste as a source of energy, fertilizer, and even fuel rather than a pure liability.

Governor Dedi Mulyadi used the same platform to press a cultural point that has become a recurring theme in his public remarks on the subject. "Kalau ada sampah jangan divideo, tetapi dipungut. Budaya itu yang harus kita ubah," he said, urging residents to pick up litter rather than film it, and framing the shift as a matter of habit as much as infrastructure. He linked the goal to a broader vision for the province, invoking a clean, orderly, and attractive West Java as a building block for the country as a whole.

Why Bandung Raya is the proving ground

The choice of location was deliberate. Bandung Raya, the metropolitan area spanning Bandung city, Bandung regency, West Bandung regency, and Cimahi, sits among the regions the national government has classified as facing a waste emergency, a designation tied directly to the nearly 2,000 tonnes of waste the area produces each day. Much of that load has historically ended up at TPA Sarimukti in West Bandung regency, a landfill that the Ministry of Environment has already worked to bring into compliance after years of open dumping, and which now operates close to its practical capacity.

That capacity constraint is precisely why the minister's visit paired the two-year deadline with a second, more technical announcement: a push to deploy Lahsamor, an organic waste processing technology developed by Indonesia's National Research and Innovation Agency, BRIN. Lahsamor is designed to convert organic waste into compost at the point of generation, in neighborhoods and households, rather than after it has already been trucked to a landfill. "Teknologi harus menjawab masalah masyarakat. Kalau sampah bisa diselesaikan sebagian dari rumah dan lingkungan kita, beban TPA akan berkurang signifikan," Zulhas said, arguing that technology has to answer real community problems, and that resolving even part of the waste stream at the household level would meaningfully reduce the burden on landfills like Sarimukti.

The minister also referenced Legok Nangka, a planned waste-to-energy facility intended to serve the Bandung Raya area, noting that it remains several years from operation. That timeline gap, between a landfill nearing capacity today and a processing facility that will not be ready for years, is the practical reason upstream measures such as household sorting and community-level composting have taken on urgency in the government's messaging. "Kita tidak bisa menunggu tiga tahun sementara sampah terus menumpuk," Zulhas said, a direct statement that the region cannot afford to wait three years while waste continues to accumulate.

From voluntary guidance to a sanctioned system

The Bandung announcement did not arrive in isolation. It builds on a policy line Zulhas has articulated since at least June, when, speaking near Monas in Jakarta, he confirmed that continued open dumping would trigger penalties under existing law and described the government's approach as requiring both incentive and enforcement together. "Harus ada stick and carrot, kita harus paksa. Kalau tidak dipaksa, tentu tidak akan berubah," he said at the time, using the English shorthand for a combined system of sanctions and rewards.

That same month, he pointed to Bantar Gebang, Jakarta's primary landfill, as an example of a facility moving away from open dumping toward organic and inorganic separation and a controlled, sanitary system, holding it up as a model other regions should replicate. In Bandung, the enforcement piece has now migrated to the provincial level as well. Governor Dedi Mulyadi has said his administration is preparing a gubernatorial regulation that would impose sanctions on regencies and cities that continue to allow open dumping within West Java, giving the province its own legal instrument alongside the national framework rather than relying solely on central government pressure.

"Kita tidak bisa menunggu tiga tahun sementara sampah terus menumpuk," said Coordinating Minister Zulkifli Hasan, arguing that upstream solutions such as household sorting and community composting cannot wait for planned facilities like the Legok Nangka waste-to-energy plant to come online.

A tightening timeline against a phased plan

The two-year framing Zulhas used in Bandung sits alongside an earlier, more granular target the government has cited since at least early July: ending open dumping in phases, with 50 percent of affected sites closed by 2027 and the remaining 50 percent by 2028. Both figures point toward the same practical horizon, a 2028 finish line, but the emphasis in Bandung on a flat two-year countdown, rather than a percentage split across two calendar years, reads as an attempt to compress the political urgency of the target even as the underlying operational plan has not obviously changed. Sirkularium notes this as a distinction worth tracking rather than a contradiction: government communications on a multi-year infrastructure programme often tighten in tone before the underlying delivery schedule itself moves, and the two should not be assumed identical without a formal revision to the phased target.

The Bandung visit also reiterated the roughly 60 cities nationwide the government has identified for new waste-to-energy conversion facilities, part of the broader Pengolahan Sampah Menjadi Energi Listrik programme that Indonesia's sovereign wealth fund Danantara has been advancing through separate site selections and financing arrangements over the preceding weeks. Bandung Raya's own waste-to-energy plant at Legok Nangka is one entry in that pipeline, and the minister's acknowledgment that it remains years away is itself a useful data point for regional governments assessing how much weight their own upstream programmes need to carry in the interim.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

For provincial and municipal governments watching this announcement, two practical signals stand out. First, the pairing of a hard deadline with a named, ready-to-deploy technology, Lahsamor, is a more actionable combination than a deadline alone. Regions facing their own capacity-constrained landfills would be well served by identifying which upstream processing technologies, whether BRIN's or others already piloted domestically, could be deployed at the neighborhood level within months rather than years, since the Bandung Raya case illustrates how a multi-year gap between today's landfill pressure and tomorrow's planned facility can be bridged, at least partially, without waiting for large capital projects to complete.

Second, the shift from a purely national enforcement posture to a provincial one, with West Java preparing its own gubernatorial sanctions regulation, offers a template other provinces facing similar pressure could adapt more quickly than waiting for a single centrally issued rule. A regionally tailored regulation can account for local landfill conditions, transport distances, and municipal budget realities in ways a uniform national instrument cannot always accommodate.

Finally, public institutions engaged in budget and infrastructure planning should treat the coexistence of a two-year rhetorical deadline and a 2027-2028 phased operational target as a prompt to seek clarity rather than a source of confusion. Aligning provincial and municipal waste management budgets, procurement timelines, and sanction enforcement schedules with whichever version of the target ultimately governs disbursement decisions will matter more to residents than the precise wording used in any single ministerial appearance. As the Bandung Raya case moves from announcement to implementation over the coming months, it offers a useful early indicator of how quickly the combination of upstream technology, provincial sanctions, and national deadlines can translate into measurable reductions in daily waste reaching sites like TPA Sarimukti.