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t is estimated that about 80 percent of plastic waste in the oceans comes from rivers and other streams. With that in mind, Make a Change World, a media organization that shares inspirational content about sustainability, plans to install 100 trash booms in waterways around Bali under a project called Sungai Watch.

Founded by brothers Sam and Gary Bencheghib, Make a Change World has launched several environmental initiatives, including #PlasticBottleCitarum, when they spent two weeks cruising the world’s most polluted river on plastic-bottle canoes.

This time, Sam and Gary, who grew up in Bali, have decided to install the first trash boom on the Yeh Poh River.  

“In launching 100 trash booms around Bali, we felt we needed to protect the very river we grew up in,” Gary told The Jakarta Post via a messaging app on Thursday.

“Since we’re mapping its entire watershed, from source to sea, it made sense starting from our backyard at the river mouth and slowly making our way upstream,” explained Gary.

To create the trash booms, Make a Change World has teamed up with environmental start-up Plastic Fischer to create affordable barriers made from local materials.

Gary said that the trash booms were inspired by standard barriers made from PVC pipe that could be found around Indonesia.

“TrashBoom001 on the Yeh Poh River is made up of 16 elements and can hold up to 4 tons of waste,” he said, adding that since each river was different, the trash booms were designed to be as adaptable as possible.

“We truly believe that mass implementation can happen if our model is affordable and made from local materials. Our current price point is roughly Rp 30 million [US$2,131] per boom,” Gary added.

In addition to installing the trash booms, they also use artificial intelligence and aerial mapping in the launch of the Sungai Watch project, an online monitoring platform to be used for cleaning up the world’s waterways.

“Our first big focus is the Ayung River that has its source on Mount Batur. Our GIS [geographic information system] renderings allow us to see Bali from above with details of up to 10 centimeters, so we can see things like a plastic bottle or a plastic bag clearly,” Gary said, adding that the technology could help them locate illegal dump sites and any plastic pollution discarded along each stream and river.

However, the trash booms will not instantly solve the plastic pollution issues.

Gary said a boom needed proper daily maintenance, especially during heavy rains, which led them to work with local administrations to identify local water warriors, those who live by the rivers, to help monitor each river’s condition.

“This project needs the resources and support of the government. We have started the project as clean rivers are a public right and we hope that governments will see the necessity to take action with us. We can only go so far with our limited resources to bring attention to this problem, but our overarching mission is for this to become a top priority on the [central] government’s agenda, like the Citarum River,” he added.

Gary said that the collected trash would be brought to a presorting facility. “We hope to upcycle some valuable plastics into tools we can use to clean up the river and we are also looking into technologies for residual waste, the 10 to 20 percent of waste that cannot be recycled.”

The initiative is among recent efforts to clean up rivers. Late last month, a trial run of a waste-filtering device called the Interceptor 001 was conducted in the Cengkareng drainage canal in Pantai Indah Kapuk, North Jakarta, by the Office of the Coordinating Maritime and Investment Minister and the Jakarta Environment Agency’s Water Management Unit.

The 13-meter-long and 7-m-wide Interceptor was developed by Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat through his nonprofit organization The Ocean Cleanup in collaboration with Danone-AQUA Indonesia.