A Mountain of Rubbish, a Community at Risk
About 40 kilometres outside central Jakarta, the landscape shifts into something surreal. Peaks of compacted refuse rise across more than 100 hectares, dwarfing the villages clustered at their base. Roughly 8,000 tonnes of rubbish arrive every day on 1,400 orange trucks from the Indonesian capital, feeding one of Asia's largest landfills: Bantar Gebang. As many as 10,000 waste pickers are believed to live and work in and around the site, sorting recyclables by hand for daily earnings of roughly 100,000 to 200,000 rupiah per household.
The work is gruelling and genuinely dangerous. Earlier this year, seven people died when a trash mound collapsed and buried them. Workers like Karmidi, 32, who has been picking waste since he was ten, choose to work at night to avoid the heat, navigating in the dark between moving dump trucks and excavators. Others, like Rustini, 48, have spent more than three decades at the site to fund their children's education, with one child now working in Taiwan and another preparing to move to Japan.
A Planned Closure with No Clear Alternative
Bantar Gebang is well over capacity, and Indonesia's government wants to close it to general waste by the end of 2027. The plan involves a gradual shift: residents in Jakarta are being asked to begin separating organic waste this year, with sorting facilities to follow. Eventually, only residual waste would reach the site, where it would be incinerated in a waste-to-energy plant. That facility is one of more than 30 such plants planned across Indonesia by state investment agency Danantara, including one in Bali where construction began this month.
But the timeline is drawing scepticism. Nur Azizah, a waste management expert from Gadjah Mada University, told The Guardian that closing the site without viable alternatives in place would mean waste appearing everywhere. The concern is not hypothetical. When Suwung landfill in Bali closed to organic waste in April, unsorted rubbish piled up on streets, fields, and rivers. Much of it was burned, sending toxic smoke across parts of the island. The local government reversed course within days, allowing organic waste back on a limited schedule.
President Prabowo Subianto declared a national campaign against waste in February, partly in response to criticism from South Korean officials who called Bali dirty. The environment ministry has since directed local governments to phase out open dumping and establish proper sorting infrastructure.
The Human Cost of an Uncertain Transition
For the people who depend on Bantar Gebang, policy timelines translate into existential uncertainty. Andi, 29, who works alongside his wife Winah, 43, says his greater fear is not the physical danger of the site but the prospect of it closing. Rasta, 55, a second-generation waste picker who has worked at Bantar Gebang since it opened in 1989, described the fatal collapse earlier this year through tears, framing the risk as simply the cost of eating.
The informal economy around the landfill has, for many families, funded school fees and created pathways out of poverty. Dismantling it without a replacement income structure could undo decades of fragile progress.
Why It Matters for Hosts
Independent operators running guesthouses, homestays, or small hotels in and around Jakarta should take the waste transition seriously as a practical business concern. Jakarta's environmental agency has already issued orders for residents to separate organic waste, and those requirements are likely to extend to commercial properties. Operators who begin composting organic kitchen waste now, establish clear recycling streams, and communicate those efforts to guests will be ahead of incoming regulation rather than scrambling to comply. Guests increasingly notice and mention waste management in reviews; a visible, genuine effort is both responsible and commercially sensible.
The details in this post were first reported by The Guardian, with reporting by Michael Neilson and photography by Claudio Pramana, published 12 July 2026.
First reported by Jakarta Travel.