Interview with Samanta Skrivere, Ministry of Waste

We are joined by Samanta Skrivere, the Founder of Ministry of Waste, who has taken the concept of waste management on islands and decided to ambitiously pursue it on a larger scale. When Samanta got in touch with us, she was on Nusa Penida, an island east of Bali, Indonesia, with a population of around 45,000 people. With the help of sustainability and waste management experts, as well as supportive partner brands, they were introducing a system to reduce the insane amount of plastic waste in the water and on the beaches.

Let’s give a big warm welcome to Samanta.

Hi Samanta, please tell us a bit about yourself. How did you end up on Nusa Penida?

Hello, thank you for having me! I’m originally from the beautiful Baltic country of Latvia, but currently call Toulouse, France my home base. When I first started to scout for locations in Indonesia where to start our project, I attended the yearly meetup of an amazing NGO, “Trash Hero”, in Bali and met an Earth champion - Kirill, who is based on Nusa Penida. He kindly invited me to visit the island and have a look if we can do anything, as he calls it his home and desperately was looking for solutions to the growing waste issue. After the visit, I didn’t have to think even twice about this being our pilot island, as well because of an amazing local community of wonderful people who care about sustainability and the island’s future.

Do you remember where you were when you came up with the idea for Ministry of Waste? What were your first steps in making it happen?

I can remember very precisely - I was working on a documentary in the Philippines in 2016 and during one of our many dives the tide started to bring in so much trash that it made diving and filming very hard. The weeks that followed this situation repeated itself all around the Philippines, in many pristine locations with no humans in sight and it shook me to my core. I had never seen this amount of trash in my life. That’s when the spark was lit and I promised to myself I want to be part of the solution.

Once I returned back to my day job in London I started learning about this problem and finally joined the London based startup incubator ‘Escape the City’, with a more precise idea of what kind of solution we could offer. Since then, the project has pivoted 2 times and is finally the Ministry of Waste you know of - a social enterprise offering innovative island waste management systems.

In Europe, we are used to hearing ‘ocean plastic’ quite frequently on social media and the news, but we don’t actually see it. What’s it like for you being there, first-hand, and seeing the plastic waste? Does it upset you?

Of course, it upsets me, but more than anything it tickles my brain and I start asking many questions - why is the situation the way it is? How could we possibly change it? Why hasn’t it been fixed already? The answers to all these questions and more are very complicated and multilayered, but once you have mapped them out - hope settles in. As we will be launching our facilities next year, the island is currently still quite polluted and that’s hard - to be patient and know that change is coming, but it won’t be today. One day - it will be today, we work towards it being in 2019.

We’d like to know how you go about connecting ‘waste industry innovators’ and ‘global leaders of sustainability’ with island communities?

No matter what we do, the island community is our foundation - as this is where we work and with whom we collaborate to make sure the island is clean. The waste becomes the connection on various levels - we are making sure the community knows what happens to their waste, especially if it involves innovative methods (like turning their old flip-flops into new ones). We have discussions with global brands who are invited to test more sustainable products and approaches to eliminate waste on the island - and these would be directly through the local communities (for example - instead of selling bottled water, local businesses offer drinking stations to locals and to tourists), or turning glass bottles back into sand which can be used as building material by locals. So as you see - nothing can be done without the island community, they are at the core of what we do.

Is it only coastal communities that need to practice better plastic management?

What if EVERYONE would practice better plastic or waste management? Or the 5R principles: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Replace, Repair! Articles about plastic are so diverse and so contradictory as well, that sometimes it’s easy to get lost and hard to build a concrete opinion as in many cases everything depends on the context - an island community that doesn’t have easily accessible drinking water will look for solutions and plastics offer us convenience and are affordable, and sometimes have a much lower carbon footprint than other materials (like glass). Again, all depends on the context. But to answer your question more directly - no, everyone should be better at their plastic management, but especially coast and riverine communities, where the risk of plastic travelling and entering the ocean is larger than from inland.

Tell us about cleanups and collections, and do you have a team out there?

We are just about to start a short cleanup period with locally hired people to test out our assumptions and the process - if everything goes to plan we will send our team to perform cleanups all across the island. That being said the global plan is to roll out the launch of our waste management system one community/village at a time and involve the local people in the village cleanups - to raise awareness, to show what difference it can make and how a clean environment can change their own perspective of where they live. Our work will only be successful if the locals become the guardians of their own environment. So sending a team to clean up in their place won’t have the same effect as the villagers doing it themselves.

What do you say to companies who are embracing CSR in order to gain their support?

I worked for a social media monitoring company for 7 years and could see how important the brand and product image was to our clients. Throughout this time I witnessed brands reputation’s destroyed, improved and revived, I’ve seen how little brands from nowhere create waves of following due to their values, integrity and message. Today’s consumer is so much wiser, pickier and more mindful than maybe our parents’ generation was, so when we speak to brands we ask them - are you ready to do really good, impactful things? Especially in a place that does desperately need it? Indonesia is among the most polluting countries in the world but is trying so hard to turn the situation around and brands can be part of these solutions. In return, we offer impact data and measurable outcomes and once we fully launch they will be able to visit Nusa Penida and see their impact directly - on the environment and the local communities. And that’s only the beginning...

You must have some amazing stories from Nusa Penida? Can you tell us what it’s like there? Despite the plastic, there must be a strong element of paradise, right?

Nusa Penida is a very special place (pardon my bias!), but not just for the amazed tourists who come to visit for a few hours or days. It holds a very particular place in the local culture too and thousands of Balinese travel here with a mission. As National Geographic once wrote: “There exists a solemn rite that every Balinese Hindu is expected to complete at least once during this lifetime. They must make a special pilgrimage to Nusa Penida, the black magic island, to visit a particular temple whose energy provides negative balance to the positive side of divinity.”

The island might be called the black magic island, but there is so much beauty, positivity and hope. If any locals get to read this, I hope they will agree with me - the island has been blessed with being unexplored by tourists for a long time and therefore unspoilt, and even today - the tourists that come to visit are different from the usual Bali crowds. It takes an effort which is rewarded 100 fold once you set foot on the island. But even to visit the most beautiful beaches, you have to climb to reach them - and what an award you get once your toes touch the sand and the shades of clear blue water. I do have to mention the island’s dogs - the amazing Bali dog breed. They are mostly very well looked after - the smartest and cheekiest bunch you might come across in your life and full with cuddles once they know you can be trusted. And the geckos...where do I even start? Well, I think you will have to come and experience for yourself. Just remember - tread carefully, leave only footprints.

How do you get the communities on board? We are assuming you don’t speak Indonesian?

You’re right, I am currently still learning and can not hold a conversation in Indonesian or Balinese (but ask me in a year!) I have to send a huge thank you to all the amazing local people who have been by my side - translating and explaining, without them this project would not exist on Nusa Penida (Terima kasih banyak Nyoman, Wayan and Putu!). And getting communities on board is still an ongoing mission and I’m sure will continue to be - as humans are not a static object, so it’s all about building and working on these relationships, showing that you care and want to be part of their lives. I believe if your starting point is based on the belief that we are all the same and want the same thing - to be happy, then your journey is already easier. As the African proverb says - “if you want to go far, go together”, that’s what we are trying to show to the locals - we need each other to succeed.

What have been the biggest challenges in getting to where you are now, and also in moving forward?

My own biggest challenge is probably very typical for entrepreneurs - our beloved imposter syndrome. Especially as I do not come from waste management or environmental background, but I have learnt to embrace it and see it as a strength as it allows me to never settle for a “no” that’s given to me, especially when it comes to being able to recycle different waste materials.

To my surprise being a woman in this field can be quite challenging as well and I have actually had harder times speaking to westerners than to local communities sometimes. I brush it off easily as I will never allow someone's opinion about my gender to hold me back, but I know that even in the future people will often assume that I am the assistant of the CEO. Thankfully, the women in the waste community are strong and very supportive!

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has been supportive in this journey thus far and will be in the future, locally and around the globe - without each one of you my life would be missing something. A special thank you to Tom.

What advice would you give to other sustainability entrepreneurs who want to set up their own business or project?

Don't listen to the people telling you that you're silly, naive or a treehugger - make sure you only allow objective criticism to touch you and to reconsider your future action plans. Listen to your intuition and let your heart guide you - you'll make the right decisions, no matter how you would do things differently in a different moment in time. Build your little inner circle, make sure there are people who give hugs, not just advice.

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