DPD RI chair asks Bali to lead a national waste sorting movement built on village institutions

On Friday 25 September 2026, the Regional Representative Council (DPD RI) held a State Dialogue in Denpasar on the theme of integrated waste management based on regional community ecosystems. The venue was the Wiswa Sabha Utama hall at the Bali Governor's Office. The message from DPD RI Chair Sultan Baktiar Najamudin was direct: Bali should become the pioneer of a national waste sorting movement.

"Kalau Bali mulai memilah, Indonesia harus ikut berbenah. Pemilahan sampah harus menjadi budaya," Sultan said, as reported by detikNews and JPNN. If Bali starts sorting, Indonesia must follow and put its house in order. Sorting has to become a culture.

The dialogue was widely reported on 25 and 26 September by ANTARA, detikNews, JPNN, Indoposco and Bali outlets. It brought national legislators, provincial officials, a practitioner and an academic into one room, and it placed Bali's community institutions at the centre of the national conversation on waste.

Who was in the room

Alongside Sultan, the dialogue brought together a broad cross section of the people who run waste management in Bali. Governor Wayan Koster's remarks were delivered by the Provincial Secretary, Dewa Made Indra. I Made Dwi Arbani, Head of the Bali Provincial Forestry and Environment Agency, represented the technical side of the provincial government. The three DPD RI members from Bali took part: Ida Bagus Rai Dharmawijaya Mantra, Ni Luh Putu Ary Pertami Djelantik and I Komang Merta Jiwa.

The practitioner and research perspectives came from Arbi Fuadi Mauldina of ecoBali and Waste4Change, and from Ni Luh Kartini, Professor of Organic Agriculture at Udayana University.

That mix matters. A national sorting movement cannot be designed by legislators alone. It needs provincial agencies that run the systems, operators who handle the material, and researchers who can turn organic waste into something farmers will use.

Bali's social capital as waste infrastructure

Sultan's central argument was that Bali already has the social structures a sorting culture needs. He pointed to desa adat (customary villages), banjar (neighbourhood associations), the tradition of gotong royong (mutual cooperation), and customary rules known as awig awig and pararem. These institutions already organise ceremonies, security and shared work at village level. Extending them to waste sorting uses channels communities already trust.

The province has been building on that base for several years. Bali applies source based waste management under Bali Governor Regulation No. 47 of 2019, and the provincial government has promoted a shift from the old paradigm of collect, transport and dispose toward reduce, sort, process, utilise and manage residue. ANTARA noted this is carried through the provincial Clean Bali movement.

Dewa Made Indra, speaking for the provincial government, summarised the village level principle in a phrase reported by JPNN and Indoposco:

"Desaku lestari tanpa sampah plastik, desaku bersih tanpa mengotori desa lain." My village thrives without plastic waste, and stays clean without polluting other villages.

The second half of that principle is the important one for policy. It commits each village to handle its own waste rather than moving the problem next door, which is the essence of source based management.

The numbers behind the model

The figures presented at the dialogue show infrastructure that is already substantial. Bali has 292 TPS3R facilities, the community scale sites where waste is reduced, reused and recycled, and 962 waste banks, according to detikNews, Indoposco and Berita Buana. Barometer Bali reported seven integrated waste processing facilities (TPST) in the province as of 2024.

Composition shapes everything else. Speakers noted that around 65 percent of Bali's waste is organic material with potential for composting and agricultural use. That is the single most important number in the discussion. If the organic fraction is separated at source and processed close to where it is generated, the volume that needs to travel to a landfill or a large facility falls sharply, and what remains is drier and easier to recycle or recover.

That is also where Ni Luh Kartini's expertise in organic agriculture connects to the waste agenda. Compost and other organic products need a market, and Bali's farming sector, including its subak irrigation communities, is a natural buyer if quality is consistent.

From provincial practice to national framework

Sultan placed the Bali discussion inside a wider national frame. He argued that Indonesia cannot move toward a green economy or meet its Indonesia Emas 2045 goals while relying on conventional waste systems. "Sampah tidak harus berakhir menjadi beban. Dengan sistem yang tepat, sampah dapat menjadi nilai, energi, dan lapangan kerja," he said, as reported by Indoposco. Waste does not have to end up as a burden. With the right system it can become value, energy and jobs.

ANTARA reported that Sultan linked waste management to a paradigm he called green democracy: the idea that Bali's success should be measured not only by tourist arrivals, hotels, investment and economic growth, but also by the environment it leaves to future generations. He said DPD RI continues to follow environmentally oriented legislation, including the Archipelagic Regions Bill and amendments on climate change, and noted that Bali has been designated a pilot location for waste to electricity (PSEL) technology in line with the government's green and blue economy agenda.

The Archipelagic Regions Bill is relevant here because waste in island provinces moves across land, coast and sea. Legislation that treats land, sea and air as one development space could give island regions like Bali clearer authority and financing to manage waste flows that cross those boundaries.

Sirkularium's view

For government and public institutions, the Denpasar dialogue is a constructive signal that the national legislature is looking to regions for working models rather than prescribing a single approach from the centre.

Bali's model has two strengths other provinces can learn from. The first is institutional. Village level bodies with real authority and legitimacy, backed by a provincial regulation that assigns responsibility at source, give sorting a social basis that awareness campaigns alone rarely achieve. Provinces without desa adat have their own equivalents, such as RT and RW structures, village governments, PKK groups and religious communities, and the lesson is to anchor sorting in whichever institutions people already trust.

The second is compositional. With around 65 percent of waste being organic, the most effective single intervention is separating and processing organics close to source. That points policy toward village and neighbourhood composting, stable offtake of compost by agriculture, and TPS3R operating budgets that reflect the organic workload.

For a national sorting movement to take root, Sirkularium suggests three practical steps. First, a simple, consistent sorting standard across regions, so that households, waste banks and TPS3R work to the same categories. Second, a reporting framework that lets provinces publish comparable figures on TPS3R throughput, waste bank volumes and the share of waste sorted at source. Third, recognition of village and banjar level achievement, so that the communities doing the work see it valued.

What to watch next: whether DPD RI turns the Denpasar dialogue into formal recommendations to the government, how the Archipelagic Regions Bill addresses waste, and whether Bali publishes updated province wide figures for TPS3R and waste bank performance. If Bali's village based model is documented and shared, it could give the whole country a practical starting point for making sorting a habit.