JAKARTA — With the Islamic month of Ramadan now over, a familiar sight has returned to the streets of daytime Jakarta: street vendors serving up chicken porridge, and everyone from office workers to delivery drivers perched on plastic stools around the steaming carts, digging into a bowl of the congee-like breakfast staple. As with most other street food in the bustling Indonesian capital, bubur ayam, as it’s known, is served in a ceramic bowl with a stainless steel spoon, which are washed after use for the next customer. Get it to go, however, and it’s ladled into a Styrofoam container lined with a plastic sheet, bundled into a plastic bag with a plastic spoon. Played out countless times every morning throughout the country, this familiar vignette is a good illustration of how Indonesia has the capacity to go big on the least-practiced aspect of the “3 Rs,” said Tiza Mafira: the “reuse” part of the “reduce-reuse-recycle” mantra. Tiza is the director of the Indonesia Plastic Bag Diet Movement, a civil society initiative that aims to get people to cut back on their plastic use through the 3 Rs. “In reality, reuse is already a part of Indonesia’s traditional wisdom,” she said, pointing to the people who take the time to have their bubur ayam on the sidewalk. Chicken porridge served in a ceramic bowl with a stainless steel spoon from a street vendor in Jakarta in 2024. Image courtesy of David Wadie Fisher-Freberg/Wikimedia Commons. She also cited the example of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Indonesia bets on ‘reuse’ to curb plastic waste and build a circular economy
