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s the world'€™s second biggest contributor to plastic waste in oceans, Indonesia is set to tap the potential of a waste bank system to reduce the amount of mismanaged plastic waste.

In Indonesia '€” the world'€™s fourth-most populous nation '€” people living along coasts generated about 3.22 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste in 2010, about 10 percent of the world total. Of that, between 0.48 million and 1.29 million metric tons ended up as marine waste, a study led by the University of Georgia in 2015 said.

The Environment and Forestry Ministry said on Wednesday that it would soon begin mapping existing waste banks nationwide in order to analyze the potential capacity of the system.

'€œNow we have around 4,000 waste banks, from Papua to Sumatra. We will count how much trash is produced by these waste banks,'€ the ministry'€™s waste management deputy secretary Sudirman told reporters on the sidelines of a discussion in South Jakarta.

Under a bank sampah (waste bank system) residents would save their non-organic waste and deposit it.

They weigh and record their trash deposits, which are later sold to trash collectors every month. The proceeds are then transferred to the customers'€™ accounts.

Waste banks are expected to help reduce the volume of waste at the household level.

At the same time, waste that is able to be processed could generate economic value and append families'€™ incomes.

But Sudirman believed that the waste bank system had much more potential than just reducing the volume of waste at the household level.

'€œWhen I first initiated the system, I didn'€™t think much [on the various uses of a waste bank]. I just wanted to push the system as fast as possible,'€ he said.

Realizing how the country'€™s waste had turned into a massive pile of problems, Sudirman proposed that the plastics industry use raw materials from the waste bank system.

'€œ[The plastic waste] will be directed to industries so that our plastic imports don'€™t keep increasing,'€ he said.

According to data from the Industry Ministry, local plastic makers rely on imports due to raw material shortages in Indonesia.

The industry currently sources from overseas approximately 40 percent of the petrochemicals it uses to make plastics every year.

In 2014, the country needed 1.57 tons of raw materials, with 624,000 kilograms of them imported. Sometimes, producers are forced to halt production due to raw material shortages.

For example, Polytama Propindo, operator of a polypropylene plant in Indramayu, West Java, halted operations in 2012 when it could not secure petroleum-based propylene from state-owned oil and gas firm Pertamina.

Most of the nation'€™s plastics imports, principally comprising propylene and polyethylene, come from neighboring countries, including Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, as well as from Europe, the US and the Middle East.

With the country'€™s plastics industry in dire need of raw materials, Sudirman asked why Indonesia would not use materials from the waste bank system to meet the need.

Industry Ministry environmental assessment division head Lilih Handayaningrum agreed with the idea.

'€œThere'€™s a missing link between the producers of domestic raw materials with the plastics industry. For example, some of the raw materials are piling up [because of the missing link],'€ she said on Tuesday.

Besides meeting local demand, Lilih said that the waste bank system could also be used to generate energy for factories, adding that the ministry was planning to conduct a pilot project at several cement factories in Cirebon, West Java.

Sudirman also urged the ministry to divert to the waste bank system a subsidy that is used to keep import duty for plastics low.

'€œIn order to reduce imports, we have to provide incentives [for people to deposit their trash at waste banks]. Therefore, why don'€™t we subsidize the waste banks so that people can '€˜sell'€™ their trash at higher prices?'€ he said, adding that it would ultimately increase the supply of domestic raw materials.