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View all search resultsBali Waste Cycle aims to scale up to make recycling profitable
Born out of Bali’s growing trash problem, Bali Waste Cycle (BWC) seeks to expand its business, balancing profit, purpose and sustainability.
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Collected waste is dropped off at Bali Waste Cycle (BWC)'s processing facility in Klungkung regency, Bali. (Instagram/@baliwastecycle)
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orn out of Bali’s growing trash problem, Bali Waste Cycle (BWC) is seeking to expand its business, balancing profit, purpose and sustainability.
The province, one of the world’s top tourist destinations, has been overwhelmed with mounting volumes of unmanaged waste amid poor and uneven infrastructure.
Bothered by the growing piles of waste, much of which comes from single-use plastic, Olivia Anastasia Padang bootstrapped her waste management initiative in 2019 to get BWC off the ground.
“We saw plastic everywhere, and during the pandemic, everyone was using single-use packaging. So, we thought, why not build a local company that focuses on waste management?” she told The Jakarta Post on July 25.
A 2019 study revealed that Bali generates 1.6 million tonnes of trash per year, including around 303,000 tonnes of plastic waste.
At the beginning, Olivia invested her personal funds into “trying things out”, while also establishing connections with communities and the local government to support her journey.
In the first two years, revenue grew at a snail’s pace, and BWC failed to break even. “We couldn’t balance the social [purpose] with the entrepreneurship at first, especially when we wanted people to know about us. But we don’t see [publicity efforts] as a loss; it's a marketing [cost],” she said.
