Sungai Watch, a Balinese environmental organization, actively collects trash from rivers for sorting and recycling. Throughout 2023, they collected 537,189 samples of trash from various rivers in East Java and Bali.
Sungai Watch found that several brands were predominantly represented in the collected samples.
Danone brand waste was the most abundant, with a volume of 39,118 samples.
Danone waste accounted for 13% of total plastic cup waste, 25% of total polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle waste, 10% of total sachet plastic waste, and 3% of total hard plastic waste collected.
Other brands with the highest volume of waste found were Wings, Indofood, Ultra Jaya Milk, Orang Tua Group, Unilever, Mayora, Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Sinar Sosro.
"We clean rivers every day and we realize that plastic pollution is not only the result of products released by these companies; the government and consumers also share responsibility," said the Sungai Watch team in a post on their Instagram account on Tuesday (February 13, 2024).
"However, these companies need to take responsibility for better packaging of their products and for collecting their packaging waste scattered in the environment," they added.
Below is a detailed list of the top 10 brands with the most waste samples found by Sungai Watch in rivers in East Java and Bali in 2023:
1. Danone: 39,118 samples
2. Wings: 33,601 samples
3. Indofood: 26,156 samples
4. Ultra Jaya Milk: 23,445 samples
5. Orang Tua Group: 23,113 samples
6. Unilever: 21,487 samples
7. Mayora Indah: 21,185 samples
8. Nestle: 17,481 samples
9. Coca-Cola: 15,203 samples
10. Sinar Sosro: 14,001 samples