Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is awash in garbage and hundreds of volunteers are fighting to stop the growing load of waste in its landfills as their capacity limits are exceeded.
The volunteer group, Trash Hero World (based in Switzerland) has started a movement to clean parks and streets in the city in order to raise awareness among the population of the magnitude of the problem.
Still, trash is only part of Jakarta's pollution crisis. The capital of Indonesia has, on more than one occasion, topped the world's pollution rankings and is facing imminent collapse of much of the city due to groundwater extraction.
The leader of the Indonesian Trash Hero volunteer group, Gusti Krishna Aditama, asks the citizens of Jakarta to look for alternatives to plastic to curb this problem since "waste, even if collected, cannot simply disappear. In reality, waste is moved to other places, such as the sea. "This is a problem because they can cause flooding or pollute the sea and affect the livelihood of fishermen," argues Gusti Krishna.
