We've always worked with Eco Bali Recycling to manage our waste from TEDxUbud and make a strong commitment to reducing use of plastic and single-use items. However, this year was special as Eco Bali co-founder Paola Cannucciari helped us to plan a more assertive waste sorting system for attendees.

For the first time, we had an organic and food waste bin and a goal to divert as much trash as possible into recycling and compost instead of adding to Bali's horrible landfill problem.

Paola and her team took all our waste away after the event and promised to send us a full report after they sorted and weighed the waste. True to her word, we received some great data back from the team and a renewed commitment to beating the benchmarks set this year in the future.

2018 TEDxUbud Waste Report Eco Bali-01.png

Over a period of 7 hours, 650 people produced over 400 kilograms of waste! Over 85% of that was recycled or composted by the Eco Bali team. It was also very encouraging to see plastic only made up 2.6% of the total waste generated.

2018 TEDxUbud Waste Report Eco Bali-02.png

Living in Bali, every day we come face to face with the consequences of bad waste management. We've always made a huge effort to make our events as ‘trash free’ as possible. One of those ways is to make sure our attendees don't need to bring or buy the dreaded one-use plastic Aqua bottle.

We do this by providing each guest something to drink from, like these glasses below from Bali Recycling, and free refills of water using Kopernik's Nazava water filters throughout the venue.

For past events, we've also given each guest a metal water bottle...

...or provided them with a bamboo cup—freshly cut bamboo gently sanded so it was ‘lip friendly’.

We've also teamed up with Jenggala Ceramics to do a limited-edition mug for each guest to use at the event and then take home.

We recommend looking into the Avani line of products, including compostable paper cups for hot drinks and wooden spoons and forks. They go perfectly with the traditional Balinese ingke we use as plates, which are lined with fresh banana leaves.