A Fresh Approach to Sustainable Waste Management

How we helped test a new service to influence sustainable behavior between community and brands.

Meet Marimari

Marimari is transforming waste management in Indonesia, making it easier, more sustainable, and more reliable. The goal is simple: reduce landfill waste while fostering collaboration between residents and waste collectors. By focusing on sorting, collection, and recycling, Marimari is creating a community-driven model for sustainability—one bag of recyclables at a time.

The project started with an ambitious idea: What if waste sorting could be an engaging and rewarding experience? While "fun" might be a stretch, Marimari aimed to ensure that people's efforts weren’t wasted—literally. The team launched a pilot program in a residential community, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Sorting participation increased, residents felt empowered, and many even expressed willingness to pay a premium for a service that keeps their neighborhoods clean and green.

What we did

The Marimari pilot made a significant impact on how Jakarta residents approach waste management. The program engaged 240 households, with 138 participating in the structured sorting experiment. The results were impressive: sorting accuracy reached 84%, and residents began to see waste management as something they could actively improve. Notably, high-end residents showed a willingness to pay more for responsible waste disposal.

One major insight was the importance of trust. Many residents previously believed that waste collectors mixed everything together, rendering sorting efforts useless. Through improved communication and transparency, Marimari helped rebuild trust between residents and waste collectors.

Beyond sorting, Marimari's team immersed themselves in the waste management ecosystem, conducting field research to understand real-world challenges. They observed daily habits, listened to residents' concerns, and identified inefficiencies. Surprisingly, they found that some waste collectors were already pre-sorting materials, even though residents were unaware.T

To scale its impact, Marimari is expanding beyond residential communities. By forming partnerships with private waste collectors and transport services, the team is building an end-to-end waste tracking and sorting system. The mission is clear: divert as much waste as possible from landfills.

While Marimari is also exploring service solutions for brands, this article focuses on its work with residents.

Chapters

• 01 Indonesia's garbage crisis
• 02 Running the Pilot Experiment
• 03 Designing the MVP Service
• 04 Bringing Marimari to Life
• 05 The Vision of Marimari

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Indonesia's garbage crisis

Indonesia faces a serious waste management crisis, with nearly 90% of all waste going untreated. A staggering 69% of waste ends up in landfills, while 10% is buried, contributing to widespread environmental degradation. Unlike some developed countries with structured waste processing systems, Indonesia’s waste operations suffer from limited government support and investment, leaving communities to fend for themselves.

Waste collection services are often unreliable, largely due to outdated and inefficient manual logistics. This creates a frustrating experience for residents, who are required to pay a monthly fee between $5 and $20 for services that frequently fail to meet expectations. Moreover, the absence of a strong culture of waste separation further complicates the situation, making it difficult to attract investment into the sector.

A significant portion of waste management businesses in Indonesia still operate manually, leading to unproductive business practices. Without efficient sorting systems in place, recyclable materials that could have been recovered are instead lost in the overwhelming stream of mixed waste. These inefficiencies not only harm the environment but also make it increasingly difficult for businesses to scale sustainable solutions.

Indonesia’s waste crisis isn’t just a local problem—it’s a global concern. The country is the second-largest contributor to ocean plastic pollution, with thousands of tons of plastic waste leaking into waterways every year. Without urgent intervention, the waste problem will continue to grow, making solutions like Marimari all the more necessary.

Field research was crucial for understanding why residents weren't sorting

Understanding how waste management actually works on the ground was a crucial part of the Marimari project. The team spent time in communities, observing daily routines, talking to residents, and learning about the real challenges they face when it comes to sorting waste. This hands-on approach helped shape the solutions, ensuring they were practical and easy to adopt.

We learnt that many residents wanted to sort their waste but believed it would all end up in landfill anyway

The research uncovered a major issue: many residents wanted to sort their waste but didn’t trust the system. They believed that even if they tried to sort their waste, the waste collectors were just throwing everything into the same truck and sending it all to landfill anyway. By digging deeper, the team discovered that many waste collectors were actually sorting materials by hand, but residents had no way of seeing this.

The solution? Better communication and more visibility into the process.

The Pilot Experiment: Testing to see if we could get residents to start sorting their waste

The team ran a 2 week public experiment with 200+ residents in Jakarta by teaming up with a local waste collector and resident complex. Our hypothesis was that if we provide sorting bags to residents with clear instruction, it will be enough to get them to start pre-sorting their trash.

One of the biggest wins was seeing how people responded to the sorting initiative. With a little guidance (and some color-coded bags), more than half of the residents in the pilot community got involved, making sure their waste was properly sorted. During the week we caught one of the rubbish trucks collecting our sorting bags and were able to quickly check two of the bags. We were happy to see they were correctly sorted!

The best part? It wasn’t just a one-time effort. Sorting accuracy stayed high, and people actually felt proud of their contribution to a cleaner environment.
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The team's next step was to check the sorting accuracy and participation rate of the experiment and then conduct follow-up interviews on their experience. During the interview we also wanted to assess their willingness to pay for a future vision of the service.

Designing the MVP Service

Building on insights from the pilot experiment, the team started shaping the MVP, carefully mapping out the flow of data, money, and communication among all service users. We first examined the resident's current experience, then envisioned an ideal journey. From there, we honed in on the most valuable features, ensuring the MVP focused on what would make the biggest impact.

Bringing Marimari to Life

To pull everything together, the team developed the Marimari brand. By creating a simple and recognizable brand, Marimari made waste management feel less like a chore and more like a shared mission.

A big hurdle in waste management is that people don’t always trust what happens after their trash is collected. Many assumed everything just got dumped together at the landfill, making their sorting efforts pointless. The team worked to change that perception by improving transparency. They introduced clearer communication, shared reports on what was happening to the waste, and made sure residents could see the real impact of their efforts. Slowly but surely, trust started to rebuild.

The Marimari Vision

Marimari's vision for the future is to become Jakarta’s go-to system for sustainable waste treatment. The next step is scaling up the service and refining the digital infrastructure to provide real-time waste monitoring, data reporting, and seamless coordination between residents and waste collectors. The plan is to expand beyond residential areas to include commercial buildings and public institutions.

Two core services were envisioned: Marimari Collect and Marimari Trace. Marimari Collect is designed for communities, making waste sorting and recycling easier, more transparent, and even rewarding. Meanwhile, Marimari Trace helps track collected brand packaging, ensuring accountability in how it’s processed.

A key part of this strategy is working with partners—leveraging private waste collectors, transport services, and waste treatment facilities to keep operations scalable without heavy asset investments. The ultimate goal is to create an end-to-end sustainable practice that prevents waste from ever reaching landfills.

As a next step Marimari aims to begin experimenting with a FMCG brand, who are mandated by government to manage, track, and report on their brand package waste.