Indonesia’s weapon to cut plastic bag use: devout Muslims

On Tuesday, the government announced a cooperation agreement with clerics from the country’s largest Muslim groups, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah, to change consumer behaviour pertaining to the use of plastic shopping bags.
In the partnership, NU and Muhammadiyah now have a mission to promote the use of reusable bags to cut plastic bag use in Indonesia.
“NU and Muhammadiyah have a large number of followers. The most forceful way is for their clerics to tell the masses in a simple way to change their mind sets,” Rosa Vivien Ratnawati, the Environment and Forestry Ministry’s director-general for waste management, said.
Indonesia is desperately trying to end the dependency of its people on plastic shopping bags, having pledged to reduce its waste volume to 30 per cent by 2025.
The use of plastic bags in Indonesia has increased over the past 10 years to approximately 9.8 billion bags per year – 95 per cent of which end up unprocessed, according to the Environment and Forestry Ministry.
NU and Muhammadiyah said in a joint statement that they were committed to “carrying out a plastic bag use reduction movement, which is part of an Islamic culture, by implementing it in numerous activities from childhood to adult level”.
The two organisations, which boast more than 100 million followers combined, said they would also conduct a “reusable bag movement” that would be introduced gradually within their organisations and at their regional branches.
“The declaration shows that the NU does not only care about politics or religion, as many people think,” Fitria Aryani, the waste bank director of the NU’s disaster mitigation and climate change agency said.
Fitria said the declaration followed an NU initiative launched in May, ngaji sampah, which translates to “sermons on waste”.
In the programme, broadcast online by NU’s central office in Jakarta once a month, clerics connect waste management with religious norms in their sermons.
“The next session of ngaji sampah, to be held after the Idul Fitri holiday [on June 15], will discuss the reduction of plastic shopping bags,” said Fitria.