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No wasted effort: The world’s largest recycling village in Sumatra
German NGO Project Wings works closely with locals to ensure the village is self-sustaining upon completion.
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The first building to be completed used around 10,000 ecobricks (Courtesy of Project Wings/Project Wings)
G
unung Leuser National Park in Sumatra is one of the last places on earth where critically endangered orangutans still live in the wild. It is also home to thousands of other species – but many of them are on the brink of extinction due to the massive rainforest destruction, primarily for palm oil production, which is neither good for the biodiversity nor for the climate in general.
Another huge problem in the area is the high amount of plastic waste. Every year, Germany sends around 67,000 tons of plastic waste to Indonesia – that is the weight of approximately 1,000 elephants – and Germany is only one of 21 countries with plastic export to Indonesia. In addition, Indonesia is the world’s second biggest plastic producer and has an insufficient recycling system.
Enter Project Wings, a non-profit organization from Germany with the aim of building the world’s largest recycling village in Bukit Lawang. Marc Helwing, Erich Stieb, Leonie Daimann and Sebastian Keilholz, all of whom used to work as fund-raisers for some of the biggest NGOs worldwide, founded Project Wings in March 2019. Their aim is to combine environmental and animal protection with humanitarian aid, through projects that are geared toward leaving behind a self-sustainable system, guided by the locals.
Civil engineer and ecobrick expert David Heitmann joined Project Wings in August 2019 after hearing about their work on the radio and spent some six months in Sumatra. The project, he says, has become a big part of his mission in life.
“One of our first actions was to establish an ecobrick deposit system,” Heitmann says, explaining the different steps of building an ecobrick. “First, you have to collect plastic waste, clean it and dry it. Then, the plastic waste has to be cut into small pieces and compressed into a clean bottle. It must weigh at least 500 grams. Only then can we use them as construction bricks.”
For every ecobrick the locals produce, they receive Rp. 5,000 from Project Wings.
