ESTONIA — Dompet Dhuafa Volunteer (DDV) is actively involved in the world’s volunteering movement, especially in handling waste. At the Let’s Do It World Conference which took place in Tallinn, Estonia on January 26-29, 2023, DDV presented ideas and volunteering movements in various actions to build a waste-free world.
The conference was opened by the President of Estonia, Mr. Alar Karis. He noted that the World Cleanup Day has successfully involved almost all countries. This is a great achievement.
“Let’s Do It World is one of the platforms that offers to bring a change in people’s mindset through education, climate education,” the President said, as quoted from the https://www.letsdoitconference.org/news page.
On this occasion, DDV, which was represented by Ika Akmala as the Community & Volunteerism of Dompet Dhuafa, also gained many insights and ideas from various sources to be applied in Indonesia.
Let’s Do It Foundation brings together communities in different countries to together hold one vision and mission, which is to build a waste-free world where governments, businesses, and individuals are collectively responsible for developing, offering, and using circular or zero-waste products and services.
The conference gathered more than 200 participants to discuss and create a waste-free future. During the four-day conference, the state leaders, teams and organizers gathered together on the theme of “Realizing Unity“, to learn, plan and inspire each other.
On her occasion, Ika said, DDV has carried out many waste collection actions. From there, she found that around 50-60% of waste in Indonesia is disposable food packaging. Therefore, DDV seeks to make changes by making the society aware, especially young people, to take on the role as volunteers of the movement to care about waste.
“After many discussions about various waste cases in other countries, we can conclude that the problem of waste in Indonesia is plastic packaging,” said Ika.
She said that in 2019, DDV collaborated with World Cleanup Day Indonesia (WCD) to organize a cleaning action in September, in unison involving 1,128 Dompet Dhuafa volunteers at 15 points in Indonesia. This action managed to collect 40.4 tons of waste in a day. Not stopping there, after the waste was collected, Dompet Dhuafa Volunteer conducted a waste audit where the waste was sorted and recorded based on the type of group. Thus, it was found that as much as 63% of waste was a type of food packaging waste. Until now, the Cleaning Action in September has become a routine agenda of Dompet Dhuafa Volunteers every year.
The next agenda as the results of this conference, DDV builds an extensive network and will be more concerned with reducing one-time used waste. With confidence, DDV presented in the forum, that DDV as a grassroots movement strives to give education to build awareness to the society about waste, in religious activities. DDV has succeeded in replacing disposable containers in the form of eco-friendly containers according to the wisdom in each region.
“With various new insights from this conference, DDV hopes that next, the (Indonesian) government can make a firm policy in handling disposable plastic waste cases. DDV and other communities will continue to strive to encourage the government’s policy towards the public against waste,” Ika said when she arrived in Indonesia.
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Ika also found that other countries have movements that are directly regulated by the government, by involving other agencies under it. Including the volunteers who have a place as HR in the field. This certainly makes it very easy to realize waste-free. Because the role of the government is so strong as a policy maker. (Dompet Dhuafa/Muthohar)