Network power and exclusion of informal waste pickers when plastic flows change: A case study of community waste banks in Klaten Municipality in Indonesia

Abstract

Countries, like Indonesia, without advanced waste management systems and with higher levels of population and consumption growth, face particular challenges in addressing plastic waste and marine pollution. To address and prevent plastic marine pollution, Indonesia introduced mitigation initiatives, such as Extended Producer Responsibility, waste banks, and take back schemes. While recent research shows such approaches are able to prevent marine litter, research into their social and equity effects is scarce. This is problematic, because mitigation initiatives can have in- and exclusion effects in terms of access to valuable waste for vulnerable, informal waste actors. This article combines the sociology of network and flows with a network power typology to study how the implementation of waste banks in Klaten Municipality, Indonesia not only led to reduction in plastic pollution, but also the exclusion of cartmen, waste pickers and mobile intermediates from waste networks and thus from accessing these valuable waste flows. A waste bank is a community based business that provides households with additional income and turns household waste into economically valuable materials by trading them with recyclers. In doing so they outcompete a vulnerable group like waste pickers. Instead of waste pickers, households become part of the plastic waste networks. In addition to assessing environmental effects of (marine) plastic pollution mitigation initiatives, more scholarly attention should go towards assessing the in- and exclusion dynamics around different plastic mitigation initiatives. The sociology of network and flows is a useful lens through which to examine these in- an exclusion effects.