Parliament presses for a managed transition as the ministry sets out its waste roadmap

A hearing that put the national numbers on the record

On Monday 7 September 2026, at the parliamentary complex in Jakarta, Commission XII of the DPR held a hearing with the Deputy for Waste, Hazardous and Toxic Substance Management at the Ministry of Environment and the Environmental Control Agency. Vinda Damayanti Ansjar presented for the ministry. Sugeng Suparwoto chaired the session.

The figures put on the record are the most current national picture available. Indonesia generates 144,562 tonnes of waste a day, growing at 1.48 percent a year, at about 0.48 kilograms per person per day. Of that, 35,697 tonnes a day, or 24.73 percent, is managed. The remaining 108,652 tonnes a day is not.

Commission XII chair Melchias Markus Mekeng set those numbers against the targets in the national medium term development plan, which calls for 63.41 percent of waste managed by 2026 and 100 percent by 2029. He also raised the landfill count: 343 open dumping sites still operating across 353 regencies and cities, against a government target of closing them during 2026.

Source figures for the landfill total vary. The hearing coverage refers to 343 open dumping sites among 510 recorded landfills, while related reporting describes roughly 70 percent of 522 landfills operating as open dumps, which would be closer to 365. The proportion is consistent even where the totals are not, and the ministry also reported that 36.59 percent of waste enters the environment directly.

The roadmap, year by year

The ministry set out a sequence rather than a single deadline, which is the more useful form for local governments planning their own budgets.

In 2026, the focus is strengthening governance, ending open dumping, and reactivating material recovery facilities that are already built but not operating. In 2027, the emphasis shifts to large scale facility construction, with waste to energy plants beginning to come online. In 2028, the target is full waste management, with those plants operating at capacity. Through 2029, the work turns to sustaining what has been built.

The destination is stated in operational terms. The ministry expects every household to receive a collection service, around 90 percent of waste to be processed, and only about 10 percent, genuine residue, to reach a landfill.

That last figure is the one worth holding onto. A country sending 10 percent of its waste to landfill is running a fundamentally different system from one sending the majority. It implies sorting at source across tens of millions of households, a recycling industry able to absorb the recovered material, and organic processing at a scale Indonesia does not yet have. The 2028 date is ambitious by any measure, and stating it in terms of residue share rather than a headline percentage makes it possible to check.

Producer responsibility organisations enter the framework

The most substantive new element is a revision of the rules on producer responsibility.

The ministry is introducing Producer Responsibility Organisations, non profit bodies established and funded by manufacturers themselves, with fees set proportionally to the volume and type of packaging each producer puts on the market. The framework applies the polluter pays principle and targets fast moving consumer goods, bottled water, retail, and the food and beverage sector.

Importers are brought in on equivalent terms. Ansjar was explicit that importers will carry responsibility for the products and packaging they bring into the country.

Both features matter. A PRO structure moves extended producer responsibility from an obligation each company meets individually, with wide variation in effort, to a collective body with pooled funding that can contract collection and recycling at scale. It is the model that has underpinned packaging recovery in a number of other jurisdictions, and its strength is that it creates a single counterparty capable of signing long term offtake agreements with recyclers.

Extending the obligation to importers closes the gap that otherwise makes domestic producers carry a cost their imported competitors avoid. That is a fairness question and a compliance question at the same time.

The transition risk parliament raised

Mekeng's central argument was that waste to energy cannot carry the policy alone. He pressed for a comprehensive approach combining source reduction, recycling, composting, refuse derived fuel and other technologies.

Closing landfills without a transition period risks moving the problem to transfer stations, streets, rivers, or open burning.

That is a constructive warning rather than an objection to the target, and it reflects something local governments have already encountered this year. A landfill that stops accepting mixed waste creates immediate pressure that has to land somewhere. Where downstream capacity is ready, it lands in sorting and processing. Where it is not, it lands in the places Mekeng named.

Commission XII also pressed for capacity to reach eastern Indonesia, with Papua raised specifically. National averages conceal wide regional variation, and a programme that delivers 100 percent coverage in Java while leaving eastern provinces behind would meet a national figure without meeting the policy's purpose.

Sirkularium's view for government and public institutions

Three observations.

First, on the roadmap's usefulness to local planning. The year by year structure, with 2026 for governance and open dumping closure, 2027 for construction and 2028 for full operation, gives district governments something to align their own capital plans against. Districts should map their own facility timelines onto that sequence now, because the 2027 construction year is when national attention and financing will be concentrated, and projects that are not ready to build will wait.

Second, on the PRO revision. This is the development that most changes the economics for anyone operating in recovery and recycling. A funded, collective producer body is the counterparty that community waste banks, TPS 3R operators and recyclers have lacked. Local governments should follow the drafting closely and press for PRO funding to be accessible to municipal and community operators, not only to large private recyclers, because that is what determines whether the money reaches the collection layer.

Third, on regional equity. We would encourage the ministry to publish coverage figures disaggregated by province alongside the national number. A single national percentage can be met while regional gaps widen, and disaggregated reporting is the simplest safeguard against that outcome. It also gives provinces outside Java a documented basis for requesting the facilities they need.

What to watch next: the published roadmap document and whether it carries funding allocations by year, the draft of the revised producer responsibility regulation and the fee structure proposed for PROs, the verified count of landfills that actually cease open dumping during 2026, and whether transition arrangements are specified for districts closing sites without downstream capacity in place.

The hearing produced a sequence, a mechanism and a set of numbers that can be checked. Sirkularium will continue following all three.