Denpasar cuts what it sends to Suwung by 70 percent, and its schools show how

A visit to a school, and a number for the island

On Thursday 10 September 2026, Hanif Faisol Nurofiq, Deputy Coordinating Minister for Food, visited SDN 5 Pedungan in Denpasar to see a primary school running its own waste bank. He held the environment portfolio when TPA Suwung was closed, which gives his account of what has happened since some weight.

The figure he brought was a 70 percent fall in waste shipped from Denpasar to TPA Suwung. Only residual material now enters the site.

Only residue will go to Suwung from now on. Organic waste is handled at source, and inorganic waste has been reduced through various efforts.

That sentence describes a city operating on a different basis from the one it used a year ago. Bali closed TPA Suwung to general waste on 1 March 2026 and limited it to residual material from 1 April. The environment ministry framed the closure at the time as positioning Bali as an early mover on modern waste management without open dumping.

Hanif also set aside speculation circulating about the site's future, saying there is no intention to turn Suwung into a golf course or anything similar. The site's eventual use has not been announced.

What closing Suwung actually required

The reduction did not arrive with the closure order. It was assembled over several months, and the intermediate figures are the useful part of the record.

Denpasar was sending 1,033 tonnes a day to Suwung before the restrictions. By July 2026 that had fallen to about 500 tonnes a day, roughly a halving. Truck movements dropped by more than half once the April restriction on organic waste took effect. The site has been under central government monitoring through the transition.

Household behaviour moved alongside the tonnage. The share of Denpasar residents sorting waste at source rose from about 30 percent to around 70 percent. In neighbouring Badung regency, more than 70 percent of residents are reported to be sorting.

Those two series belong together. A landfill restriction that is not matched by household separation produces illegal dumping rather than diversion. Bali's sequence ran the other way: the restriction created the requirement, and participation rose to meet it over roughly six months.

The transition was not frictionless. When organic waste was first excluded in April, hauliers queued and the province faced immediate pressure over where that material should go. The figures reported since suggest the system absorbed the shock rather than breaking under it.

One distinction is worth holding onto when reading numbers of this kind. A fall at one landfill can mean two very different things: the material has genuinely been reduced and processed closer to source, or it has simply moved to another disposal site. Both produce the same line on the Suwung weighbridge. What separates them is the rise in household sorting participation from 30 to 70 percent, because that figure can only move if material is actually being handled upstream. That is why the two series should always be published together rather than separately.

The school waste bank as a savings account

SDN 5 Pedungan runs Bank Sampah Gema Pelita, a waste bank the school itself started. Pupils from grades 1 to 6 collect and weigh cardboard, bottles, plastic and paper. The collection runs every two weeks.

The school reports a reduction of 70 to 90 percent in plastic waste in its own environment since the programme began. Ni Made Suci Ningsih, the principal, leads it.

The design detail worth noting is the incentive. Pupils accumulate a balance in the waste bank that converts into rewards as they move up a year, and those finishing grade 6 can withdraw what they have accumulated. A child who joins in grade 1 carries a growing balance for six years.

That structure does something a poster campaign cannot. It makes separation a habit attached to an account the pupil owns, sustained across the whole of primary school, and it sends the practice home with the child. Hanif framed the pupils as a foundation for what Bali is trying to build.

Schools are also, in pure operational terms, efficient collection points. They have a fixed population, a predictable timetable, adult supervision and a storage room. A fortnightly collection from a school gathers clean, pre sorted material at a single address.

What happens to a closed landfill

The golf course question is trivial in itself and points at something that is not. Indonesia is about to close a large number of landfill sites, and very little public attention has gone to what those sites become.

A closed landfill is not neutral ground. It continues generating methane and leachate for years, requires capping, gas management and monitoring, and cannot carry ordinary development without engineering. Those obligations have costs, and they fall on the local government after the site stops receiving the tipping fees that funded its operation.

Announcing an intended after use early matters for that reason. It determines the standard of closure engineering required, it sets the monitoring budget, and it gives the surrounding community a settled expectation instead of rumour. Bali has closed the site and reported the diversion. The after use plan is the piece still outstanding.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three observations.

First, on sequencing and patience. Denpasar reached a 70 percent reduction roughly six months after the first restriction, with participation moving from 30 to 70 percent over the same window. That is a realistic timescale for other cities to plan against. Expecting the full result within weeks of a landfill restriction leads to premature judgements that the policy has failed, when what is actually happening is a behavioural change working through at its normal pace.

Second, on schools as infrastructure rather than audience. Most local governments treat schools as a place to deliver environmental education. Denpasar's example suggests treating them as collection points with an attached savings product. The multi year balance is the mechanism that holds participation, and it costs very little to administer. Districts should consider whether their waste bank regulations allow school units to operate accounts for pupils, since that is often the blocking detail.

Third, on post closure planning. We would encourage every province closing landfill sites this year to publish, alongside the closure date, the intended after use, the capping and gas management standard, and the budget line funding post closure monitoring. Those three items determine whether a closed site becomes an asset or a long term liability, and they are far cheaper to settle before closure than after.

What to watch next: whether the 70 percent reduction holds as the dry season ends, the tonnage Suwung actually receives now that it takes residue only, the announced after use and closure engineering standard for the site, and whether the school waste bank model is extended across Denpasar rather than remaining a strong individual example.

Bali set a date, absorbed the disruption, and now has a number. Sirkularium will continue following what the island does with the site itself.