Zero waste and environment in Indonesia (part II)

Greenaration foundation

Greenaration foundation campaign

Next interview about waste topics was held with Vanessa Letizia, Executive Director of organisation.

Greeneration foundation is non-profit organisation involved in sustainable lifestyle and consumption through ICT tools. This NGO influences people on the topic of waste through vlogs or ICT platforms, which facilitate and reflect information for the broader audience. The vision of the organisation is to achieve Green Attitude and Green Environment. They deal with the issues WAWE, which is an abbreviation for Waste Air Water Energy. Greeneration Foundation creates network platform Bebassampah in order to raise awareness and support other organisations on the topic of waste. (http://bebassampah.id )

Inspiring practices:

For achieving impactful results, organisation Greeneration Foundation decided to create a collective platform, which reports and collect information about garbage. The interactive map shows the available places where people can collect their waste. In the future, they plan to make available information about public, private and government actors in this topic. Platform bebassampah.id is a resource information centre for data related to waste management in the Bandung.

Bebas sampah. Source of image: bebassampah.id

With Vanessa we started to talk about the activities of Greeneration foundation: “We do plastic bag diet, we make tools like reusable folding bags as a substitution. Also, we work on the sustainability of organisation and profit goes in the organisation. Other activities include trainings, campaigns, education or events. Right now, Greeneration Foundation focuses on collaboration in national level with ministries.”

The organisation is thinking in the bigger scale and I could observe determination in which they approach the waste problems. They decided to take more impactful steps and head into collaboration in this topic: “We collaborate with several organisation in platform Bebassampah.id and is time for us to take a bigger role in environmental issues. Environmental activities are here and we need some platform that can connect all people in that topic. Together we can make a bigger impact. As Indonesia is an archipelago, we need to be connected among islands. The project is not about collecting data, because we want to make a holistic platform, so we improve it. We want to prove that there are a lot of people who care about that issue. And additionally, address it to the higher level.”

Greenaration foundation

Another activity, where they influence the waste in places is community activism Ecorangers. Through this initiative, Greeneration Foundation wants to encourage locals, who live in touristic areas to take care of their surrounding. The locals should see also economic benefits that they can additionally receive by caring about the environment. “In our programme, we focus on education, waste collection and economic empowerment. Supporting locals by accurate places we encourage them to proceed the waste. From the collected waste, they can process and use it for another purpose, sell it and get income. Activity should have also a business sense – in the first 3 years we will support them, but afterwards, they should be independent. In Indonesia, we can find many possibilities for rangers like producing waste bags or implementing upcycling from the materials. “

Creativity in waste issues

Challenge for the organisations in the waste issue is to input creativity in their activities. How Greneration Foundation approaches it: “In terms of creativity our programmes has a touch of it. Our topic is not too sexy, waste issue is a problem and it of course it smells (laugh), it is not an attractive subject that you will talk about with your friends. How to make it more appealing, we try to make it as a continuing change. For that purpose, we use social media and make a daily content to grab people attention with the positive message. We promote campaigns and positive stories around us.”

More information:

Greeneration foundation website: http://greeneration.id

Greeneration foundation facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greenerationfoundation/

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Image sources:

[1] http://greeneration.id/about/who/

[2] Facebook Greeneration foundation: https://www.facebook.com/greenerationfoundation/photos/a.362496067151468.78702.121784041222673/1726687507398977/?type=3&theater

[3] Facebook Greeneration foundation: https://www.facebook.com/greenerationfoundation/photos/a.940095999391469.1073741847.121784041222673/1668450306556031/?type=3&theater