Indonesia's trash satellites - 9th December 2020

Indonesia's waterways are the second largest contributors to ocean waste after those in China. Every year, 620,000 tonnes of plastic are discarded into these rivers. The government hopes to cut this figure by two thirds in the next 5 years.

In a project backed by the World Bank, the Indonesian Maritime Affairs Ministry and CLS, a subsidiary of France's space agency, are collaborating to track the movement of this waste in an attempt to understand the full extent of the issue.

Satellite beacons are placed at the mouths of Indonesian rivers and flow with the trash, tracking where it lands. The data these trackers gather is beamed via satellite to a receiver located in France.

Jean-Baptiste Voisin is the CEO of CLS Indonesia.

Voisin: "Most of them, 90 percent of them are actually beached on the Javanese coast here, ok, and only those - that one actually went to the, to that direction."

The discovery that the vast majority of this waste is beached on the coast will be welcomed by the government. It will be relatively simple to install waste collection traps and deploy boats to retrieve the rubbish from these locations.

However, as Voisin comments, there remains 10 per cent that is drifting further afield.

Voisin: "Some of the one that we are released six months ago are still, are still drifting. Unfortunately, I would like to say, because it means they are still in the ocean, and most probably it means that most of those marine debris will, will reach all the, the big accumulation of plastic that we are all aware of, either in the Indian ocean Indian or Pacific, Pacific ocean."