Indonesia-based environmental organization Greeneration Foundation founder M. Bijaksana Junerosano said the country could gain a potential US$7 billion from implementing better waste management and an additional $28 billion from implementing a holistic value chain with the circular economy model. 

“Indonesia is seeing an increase in the sustainable economy trend, especially because the issue has become a global trend,” The foundation’s executive director, Vanessa Letizia, told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

Various sectors have started their own sustainable economy agenda, which is increasingly visible in recycled product packaging, good agricultural practices, natural dyeing techniques and upcycling in textile, as well as in green investments and financing.

For companies using plastics packaging, with the current global liner economic system, 95 percent of the material value in plastic packaging worth $80 billion to $120 billion is lost annually after their first use, according to a September report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

The circular economy, therefore, “is a matter of business necessity”, Coca Cola Indonesia public affairs and communications director Triyono Prijosoesilo said on Nov. 12.

“In the long run, we have to change the way we produce. We cannot keep extracting from nature and then polluting it with waste.”