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Polluted beach with colorful fishing boats and piles of trash under a cloudy sky. Polluted beach section with trash and fishing boats in murky water under cloudy sky.

C L E A N - U P

The sad truth

Every minute, a truckload of plastic enters our oceans.1

Only 9% of global plastic waste is recycled.2

Did you know that...

...there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050?¹

Our oceans have become a dumping ground for plastic waste

Plastic pollution in our oceans results from inadequate waste management and excessive plastic production. The majority of plastic waste in the oceans comes from land, transported by rivers, wind, and floods. The shipping and fishing industries also contribute through lost cargo and equipment.

Illegal waste exports to countries with poor disposal systems exacerbate the problem. Persistent plastics remain in the ocean for centuries, forming large garbage patches and harming marine life and ecosystems. Learn more in this article „The pollution of our oceans: How did it come to this?“

Illegal waste exports to countries with poor disposal systems exacerbate the problem. Persistent plastics remain in the ocean for centuries, forming large garbage patches and harming marine life and ecosystems. Learn more in this article „The pollution of our oceans: How did it come to this?“

GOT BAG

INDONESIA

Our partner foundation GOT BAG Indonesia works to combat ocean plastic pollution with a clean-up program along the north and south coasts of Java.

Our colleagues

A man sits at a desk with a laptop and accessories, looking at the camera.

Billy

Executive Director

A woman presents accessories: an open book, surrounded by many stacks on a table.

Aen

Education Officer

Smiling woman in hijab and black t-shirt in front of a shelf with colorful binders; she reaches for one of the accessories.

Siti

Accountant

A smiling man outdoors, with stacked bottles and a white sack in the background. Accessories.

Basuki

Warehouse Manager

A smiling man carries a large white woven bag over his shoulder, outdoors in front of green plants.

Jacob

Community Development

Bag, worn by a man with a beard and dark hair outdoors, in front of green foliage and a house with a tiled roof.

Adit

Field Manager

Man at desk, in a t-shirt with 'BAG' inscription, Bag.

Willem

Founder

DSC Accessories, worn by a woman in a black top and glasses in front of a pile of plastic bottles and a bamboo wall.

Talitha

Education Officer

Man with glasses collecting trash, wearing an accessory with logos in front of a green background.

Angga

Community Development

Accessories, depicted by a man sitting on a scooter, loaded with nets full of plastic bottles.

Suyono

Community Development

Since the start of the program in Indonesia, the local team has been at the center of the clean-up activities.

WHAT GOT BAG INDONESIA DOES

Collecting plastic - Environment

Two men collect trash in a mangrove forest, wearing gloves and hats as accessories.

Collecting plastic waste from the environment

  • including beaches, riverbanks, mangrove forests and the ocean with local fishers and other participants who earn an additional income from it
  • by organizing clean-up events with volunteers on beaches or riverbanks
  • without distinguishing between the types of plastic – participants collect every piece of plastic that could harm nature

Collecting plastic - Households

A bearded man holds plastic cups over a bag, observed by a man and a woman, in the accessoires area.

Establishing and supporting waste management structures in communities for household waste

… by setting up collection points where no other disposal systems exist, so that locals can drop off their plastic waste.

Tracking collection quantities

SAULEN SECTION accessories, a man holds a QR code document being photographed with a smartphone.

Partnership with CleanHub from Berlin: They offer tracking solutions for the collection of plastic waste and find partners who want to support projects like this to offset the amount of their plastic consumption.

How it works:

  • Participants bring plastic waste to the collection point
  • The material is weighed
  • The community lead scans the collector ID to enter the information for the app: Name of the collector, date of delivery, amount and type of plastic waste, origin and delivery location of the collection

Sorting, pressing and storage for recycling

Accessories, depicted by two men loading bales of plastic bottles.

The 3,000-square-meter warehouse in Jepara is located in the area of the collection communities. The plastic waste is brought here for further processing.

Sorting: by plastic type, color and quality

Processing: Removing lids and labels

Pressing: After sorting, the plastic is pressed into cubes to reduce the volume

Recycling: Ready for transport to our recycling partners

Awareness and Education

Accessories, a classroom scene with waving adults and students.

The employees and Community Leads are important multipliers for their communities and raise awareness among the local population. Clean-up events attract attention and motivate the locals. GOT BAG Indonesia’s Education Manager Aen teaches children at two schools about the environment. The foundation offers further training for the Community Leads, such as financial training and gender training, in which gender roles are discussed. 

CLEAN-UP LOCATIONS

GOT BAG Indonesia is active in 19 communities in three different regions. The sorting and processing of the collected material takes place in the two warehouses in Jepara and Bantul.

Accessory: Map of Java with marked clean-up locations Demak, Jepara, Bantul. DESKTOP Accessories: Map of Java with the marked locations Demak, Jepara and Bantul.

OIP Accessoires, a man in an orange shirt in a boat pulls a fishing net with trash from the blue water.
A straw hat as an accessory is worn by a woman collecting trash on a beach with mangrove roots.
OIP Accessory: Man smiles and gives thumbs up from yellow truck.

O C E A N I M P A C T P L A S T I C

Coastal plastic waste refers to collected plastic waste that has already had a negative impact on the oceans or most likely would have had one.

✔ Plastic waste floating in the ocean
✔ Plastic waste collected in coastal areas or in communities without functioning waste management or recycling facilities that would otherwise have ultimately ended up in the ocean
Man with cap and t-shirt sits among garbage bags and plastic bottles, holding a dirty bottle. Accessories scene.

Due to the increasing demand from customers for more sustainable consumption options, PET has become a popular material. It is easy to recycle and can be used for many products. With the GOT BAG Indonesia clean-up program, coastal plastic waste is collected and the PET portion is fed into the yarn production for most of our long-lasting bags, together with our partner's Ocean Bound Plastic certified PET pellets.
Woman with a backpack stands in front of a landfill with excavators.

It is great that recycling is generally increasing, and we are pleased that more and more companies view waste as valuable, just as we have since 2018. What we are not pleased about: Wasted resources that end up in nature or remain buried forever in landfills because it is not profitable to better utilize them.
Accessories shows a smiling woman in front of a pile of collected plastic waste, her hand resting on the trash.

That is why GOT BAG Indonesia's clean-up program collects all types of plastic waste, not just the valuable ones. We are embarking on the challenging journey of finding the best possible and feasible solutions for every type of plastic waste collected.

From Trash

to Treasure

THE JOURNEY OF A ROLLTOP

Crumpled plastic bottle as accessory with white screw cap on white background.

01

The GOT BAG Indonesia foundation operates a clean-up program that collects coastal plastic waste from coastal areas, rivers, and the sea.

PELLETS accessories as top-down view, showing a pile of clear, square plastic granules.

02

The PET portion is sorted and further processed into pellets. All other mechanically recyclable types of plastic are sent to the most suitable recycling solutions possible. Non-recyclable plastic is passed on for energy recovery.

YARN accessories: four fluffy bundles of yarn with loose threads, detailed shot.

03

The pellets from the clean-up program flow into yarn production together with pellets from our Ocean Bound Plastic-certified recycling partner. This results in a recycled polyester yarn, which is the basis for the RE:PET main material of most GOT BAG products.

Rolltop backpack as studio shot in front view.

04

The finished products are transported to Europe and the USA by ship and then sent to GOT BAG customers.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT OUR SUPPLY CHAIN, NEWS ABOUT PRODUCTS, PROGRESS AND FAILURES ON GOT STORIES:

COLORO x GOT BAG

COLORO x GOT BAG

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„Wenn Kinder verstehen, welche Auswirkungen ihr Müll hat, beginnt echte Veränderung.“

“When children understand the impact of their waste, real change begins.”

1 World Economic Forum, The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics (2016).
2 Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., & Law, K. L. (2017). Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made. Science Advances, 3(7), e1700782.

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