Nono works as a guide in West Bali National Park. Ginny introduced him as guest speaker and Susie assisted with the presentation.

Since he has been working at West National Park, Nono has been troubled by the problem of waste – particularly plastic wastes – within the Park on the main island and on Menjangan too. Then after a motor-bike accident, when he had to rest, he thought more about this and came up with a plan. Collect the plastic waste, then sort through it finding matching pieces that can be used together to create shopping bags, hand-bags, bookmarks or wallets.

So when he was back in action, he acted on these ideas and now has 18 tailors and 50 collectors working on the project. Waste is being collected within the Park and also further afield including Ketapang in East java. He had plenty of samples to show us and they were colourful and strong – and came in many shapes and sizes. They sell them (so this is a wholesale price) from Rp30,000 to Rp80,000 depending on size.

The project aims to be self funding and to provide employment for local people. They also teach school-kids about waste management and can pay them small amounts for collecting the needed items – for example, one item they like to get is used cooking oil containers (not the bottles but the flat sachets) – and they can pay Rp500 for these.

There was plenty of animated discussion. Topics like should the plastic items collected that have no re-cycling value be burnt? To clean the oil sachets should they use detergent or is there some more eco-friendly way? Should collected items be transported to the manufacturing centre or is such transport not eco friendly? What are the best approaches to marketing?

Judging from the level of interest, and the discussion – this was a very successful presentation.