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View all search results‘Bukan Tentang Sampah’: Why waste never goes away
Jakarta produces 8,000 tonnes of waste daily, an exhibition at Erasmus Huis turns that crisis into a call for collective action and rethinking value.
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Waste lessons: At a house-like installation made of wire mesh and plastic bottles suspended on threads, Noud Sleumer explains the importance of separating waste at home during the exhibition on Feb. 5, 2026, where it can have the greatest impact across the system. (JP/Sylviana Hamdani)
O
ut of sight, out of mind. That is often how we treat waste. Once it leaves our homes, it slips from our thoughts, as if it no longer concerns us. In reality, its impact never disappears. It lingers, accumulating over time and shaping the environments we live in.
In Jakarta, that impact is hard to ignore. The city produces around 8,000 tonnes of waste each day, much of which ends up in Bantar Gebang, Bekasi, forming vast landfill mounds that are not only foul-smelling and unsightly, but also dangerous. One of them recently collapsed, killing seven people.
Cities around the world also face similar challenges. In response, an exhibition at Erasmus Huis Jakarta invites visitors to rethink sampah not as something to discard, but as material with value and another life to live.
Initiated by the Dutch Design Foundation (DDF) and supported by the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia, the exhibition grows out of a real-world community effort in waste management.
“Everyone produces waste,” said Thorsten Roobeek, first secretary for economic affairs at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Indonesia, during the opening on Feb. 5. “And most people see waste as something dirty and don’t want to look at it.”
“Many of us also think [waste] is someone else’s problem,” he added. “And that’s the problem.”
