Protest Letter to UNILEVER, WINGS and INDOFOOD - Activist : "they are contributors plastic waste in the river and coastal area"

Seven environmental communities from Malang and Surabaya will send Protest Letter to producers who cont
ribute plastic waste in the river and coastal area. This step was taken after the community found a variety of plastic waste in the Sengguruh Dam, Malang City and Wonorejo Beach, Surabaya. Representative of the Student Community of UIN Maulana Malik Ibrahim Malang, Alaika Rahmatullah said, brand audit activities were carried out upstream of the Brantas River in the Sengguruh Dam area, Gampingan Village, Pagak District, Malang Regency on September 12, 2021.
Then continued in the downstream river, namely Wonorejo Beach, Surabaya. on September 19, 2021.

Brand audit Activy at Wonorejo Coastal areal (19/9/2021)

"And this activity (brand audit) involves seven environmental communities in Malang, Surabaya and Bangkalan," said Alaika. According to Alaika, this brand audit activity aims to find out the brands of waste that are commonly found in dams and beaches. As a result, they found 10 multinational and national brands in Sengguruh Dam. The ten brands include PT Unilever, PT Wings, PT Indofood, P&G, PT Unicharm (manufacturer of Mamypoko diapers), PT Softex Indonesia (manufacturer of sweety diapers), PT Ajinomoto, PT Kao, PT Heins ABC and PT Nabati. Meanwhile, during a brand audit activity on the East Coast of Wonorejo, the team found plastic waste from four multinational brands. These four brands include Unilever, Danone, Ajinomoto and Frisian Flag. Garbage from this brand is often found in river mouths and stuck in mangrove trees in the Wonorejo area. Coordinator of Brand Audit Activities, Sofi Azilan Aini explained, plastic waste is indeed a big problem in Indonesia. This is because every year there are eight million tons of plastic waste produced by the Indonesian population. Of this total, only three million are managed while the rest is wasted into nature. 

Extendeed Producer Responsibility

With this finding, the Coordinator of River Warrior, Thara Bening Sandrina, encourages big producers to be responsible for the waste they produce. The findings of this waste can pollute the environment and damage River also coastal ecosystems. According to Thara, the state through the Waste Management Law No. 18 of 2008 has regulated the EPR or Extended Producer Responsibility mechanism. This means that producers must be willing to take care of the waste from the packages they produce after the product is used. Companies, for example, can provide special trash cans or replace packaging that can be recycled or avoid using sachets. Meanwhile, River Warrior activist, Aeshnina Azzahra invited Surabaya residents to intervene to clean the beach from single-use plastic waste. The environmental activist, who once wrote a letter to world leaders regarding imported waste, also plans to send a letter of protest to multinational and national producers. This is because these waste producers are responsible for their product waste that pollutes rivers and beaches. As we all known, plastic waste that is buried in nature due to the process of exposure to the sun will be fragmented into microplastics. This situation will threaten the safety of seafood or seafood. Therefore, he asked producers to create a plastic waste collection system (residue) for product wrappers. Another demand, he said, is that environmental activists also ask local governments that own rivers to provide waste processing facilities. "The facilities are in the form of 3R TPS (temporary processing place based on 3R, Reduce, Reuse and Recycling)," he added.