Plastic waste has been more critical or urgent in environmental challenges than it is today. Plastic waste makes up 80% of all marine pollution, and around 8 to 10 million tons of plastic are in the ocean yearly. Korean Trade Center Jakarta (later only mentioned as KOTRA Jakarta) has one of the pivotal roles in leading hundreds of Korean Companies based in Indonesia to maximize its environmental and social impact.  

Bottle of Hope Campaign initiated by KOTRA Jakarta and Gugah Nurani Indonesia emphasizes that the company supports the Government of Indonesia by proactively reducing plastic, which focuses on the collection, sorting, and education. The more private company collaborate with the government, NGOs, and communities, the more they can scale up existing initiatives, as the more waste collected, the more leverage the circular economy.





Bank IBK Indonesia was the first company to join KOTRA Jakarta in this movement. “We support the Bottle of Hope Campaign by encouraging our employees to donate their plastic waste voluntarily. I am so thankful for the employees who have actively collected and sorted and followed the instructions,” said Mr. Dae Sung Lee, Director of Bank IBK Indonesia, who symbolically handed over the first donated 30 kg of bottles and 3 kg of bottle caps which KOTRA Jakarta and Bank IBK Indonesia employees successfully collected.

The bottle waste regularly collected by the companies is donated to a waste bank under Gugah Nurani Indonesia community development program in North Jakarta called Bank Sampah Bina Rizky. Bottle of Hope Campaign contributes to a circular economy by improving the waste value chain. We aim to enable and empower current waste bank workers or members to collect more, segregate properly, and ensure the proper type of waste to get the best economic value of it. The revenue generated by the waste bank will help the community gain more income by selling plastic bottle waste. This is to support the economic improvement of the family living in Batavia’s Community Development Project’s coverage area, which indirectly led to improvement in children’s well-being.
KOTRA Jakarta and Gugah Nurani Indonesia plan to expand this initiative to more companies or schools to spread awareness and improve waste management. The sorting of waste is critical to increasing the amount of recycled waste and the quality of recycled materials. Everyone has a role in effectively sorting from individual household input to huge commercial waste loads to prevent ending up in the landfill or ocean.

FD Team