Indonesia Builds Waste Plants in 30 Cities as 60% of Waste Goes Unmanaged

Indonesia generates 150,000 tonnes of waste per day, yet 60% of it goes unmanaged and the 40% that is collected ends up in open landfill. Fadli Rahman of Denera delivered those figures to the ISWA World Congress 2026 in London, describing a national 'waste crisis' that the Indonesian Government has now formally declared.

Rahman, speaking on day two of the Congress, said foreign investors are partnering with the Indonesian sovereign wealth fund to build basic waste infrastructure. The structure works because investors face a single point of contact, take equity positions, and manage the entire process, stripping out unnecessary bureaucracy. A country of this scale operates just two waste management facilities.

"As we speak, we're building several waste management facilities in 30 cities," Rahman said. He described the programme as part of a 'multi-billion dollar' investment.

What did the panel say about investability?

Congress host Mark Shayler, circular economy expert and Head of ESG, opened the session, "The Next Billion Tons: Turning Waste into Investable Infrastructure," by urging cities to become investable waste platforms. "We need to be braver earlier as the world demands more than we deliver," Shayler said.

Dr Adam Read MBE of SUEZ offered a blunt assessment of his home market. His international vantage point at SUEZ, he said, has led him to conclude that the UK is 'highly un-investable'. Political uncertainty, market shocks and shifting priorities are closing vital recycling infrastructure across the country. He was nonetheless positive about devolution of power to local communities under the Prime Minister.

Read cited SUEZ's Reuse and Repair Hub in Greater Manchester, the largest facility of its kind in Europe. Andy Burnham approved the project as Mayor of Greater Manchester before entering national politics, on the strength of its promised social value. The procurement was scored on community value, not cost alone. SUEZ must demonstrate performance against 50 social value commitments each year with real data, or face significant penalties. Read framed these requirements not as a burden but as a driver of innovation.

Which models did other markets offer?

• Poland: Artur Dela of Eneris Group said growth has made Poland a kind of European factory, drawing investment into infrastructure to handle the resulting waste volumes.
• Croatia: Davor Vić of Zagreb Holding urged cities to act as platforms for investment, pointing to Zagreb's start-up culture and partnerships on digitalisation, AI and process optimisation. "Waste is still regarded as a problem in Croatia," he said, arguing for a shift in mindset toward opportunity.
• UAE: Daker El-Rabaya of BEEAH said the next phase of Emirati infrastructure focuses on digital transformation. BEEAH is investing heavily in training, particularly engineering and tech, to meet skills demand. Read added that systems must stay flexible because the most problematic materials entering facilities today — disposable vapes among them — did not exist 20 years ago.

Can advanced treatment become affordable at scale?

Kanadevia Inova's Fabio Dinale used his keynote, "Restoring Lost Logic: Making Advanced Waste Management Affordable at Scale," to call for recycling and recovery to work together. He pointed to traditional farming as a model in which materials were reused, recycled or recovered rather than discarded, and argued that logic should govern modern cities.

"Without recovery, there is no circularity," Dinale said.

He cited Switzerland as proof that combining recycling with energy recovery cuts landfill dependence. Recovery should not be read as electricity generation alone, he stressed. District heating, plus metals recovered from incinerator bottom ash — aluminium, copper and gold — widen the value stream. He also flagged links between organic waste treatment, wider recovery processes and fuel production.

Dinale paired the UK's policy-plus-capital mix, China's standardisation and the UAE's large-scale facilities as lessons in delivery. His prescription: stop designing every plant to bespoke specifications. "My dream is to go with small, medium, large, extra-large, like the T-shirts, right?" he said. Standardised sizes, economies of scale, local expertise and enabling policy could open advanced treatment to emerging economies. He presented the Casablanca waste-to-energy project in Morocco as a case of overcoming affordability barriers.

"We all hope that we reach a point where we will have a future free of wasted waste," Dinale said.

The Congress, hosted by CIWM in partnership with the International Solid Waste Association, returns to London for the first time in 30 years and runs three days with more than 1,000 leaders, policymakers and resource management professionals. The metric to track: how many of the 30 Indonesian facilities reach commissioning, and on what timetable.