Ibu Sofi: Saving the plastic from the river

Ibu Bakhriah Sofiatun, learned in a government workshop in 2014, about the dangers of plastic.  She learned that when it’s burned it releases toxins, and when it gets in the water it clogs and contaminates.  With her neighbours, she was in the midst of making bags from recycled plastic wrappers at the time.  Shortly thereafter, the buyer for the bags stopped buying.   But her and her neighbours still had sacks of cut up plastic ready to go.  What to do!

Ibu Sofi sits proudly on the ecobrick stools she has made with the 40kg of plastic waste that she has stock piled and saved from the river for the last three years.

She had no idea what to do with the big bags of wrappers.  She also knew well that her neighbours were sure to dump it in the nearby river.  So, she did the only thing she could think of — she bought the sacks from her neighbours and put them in her basement.  There she kept over 40kgs of plastic for over three years.

Until…. she learned about ecobricks!  When she learned about ecobricking she was overjoyed: “Ilhamdilah!  This is a solution!”.

Now she is not only ecobricking all this plastic, but also teaching her neighbours what to do with theirs.  Here she sits proudly on the ecobrick stools that she has been making with the Jogja “Sahabat Sampah” team.

Ibu Sofi isn’t alone.  In our work sharing Ecobricks in Jogjakarta, we’ve met half a dozen women who are now transforming their stockpiled plastic into ecobricks.  Like Ibu Sofi, they are overjoyed to finally put it to use.  Not only this, but they are teaching others to ecobrick.