The business of buying trash with Sampah Jujur

Sampah Jujur is an initiative based in Baung, Bali, to create an economy for plastic and other waste.  Started by John Hardy, the initiative began as morning walks picking up trash around the neighborhood.  Meeting at Bambu Indah in Ubud most weekday mornings around 7-7:30am, people walk, collecting items for recycling and reclaiming garbage from the paddies, streets and streams, bringing them to Bambu Indah, where the trash is sorted and picked up by the garbage buyers.

In early 2016, Sampah Jujur (Honest Trash) created a stall in the local Sayan Market. The stall offers to buy trash from people working in the market and from the general community at fair prices.  In a few months the community (including kids from local primary schools who have saved their garbage for the week) has brought over 2,500 kilograms of plastic, metal and paper to be sold at the market stall! Sampah Jujur has also installed compost and recyclable bins in the market and now has over twenty compost piles. If compost is sold this could mean a revenue of over USD2,000 a month to pay for the staffing and running costs of the stall.

The bamboo model for the bamboo structure of the stall.

Offerings before building begins.

Success!

Local primary school students with their weekly garbage, getting ready to sell it to Sampah Jujur.

Unsorted market trash dumped by the stall. Volunteers from the trash walks and the Green School helping to sort trash from the market

Compost from the organic market material