Indonesian company tackles plastic scourge

From bags washing up on Bali's beaches to food packaging scattered across roads and clogging waterways in cities, Indonesia is facing a plastic waste crisis driven by years of rapid economic growth.

Now an entrepreneur from Bali, fed up with garbage littering the famous holiday island, is trying to tackle the problem with alternatives to conventional plastic.

His company, Avani Eco, produces goods including cassava carrier bags, takeaway food containers made from sugar cane and straws fashioned from cornstarch, which founder Kevin Kumala says biodegrade relatively quickly and don't leave any toxic residue.

"I'm an avid diver and surfer, and I'm out there seeing this plastic pollution in front of my very eyes," said Kumala, explaining why he decided to get into the business of biodegradable plastics, known as "bioplastics".

After witnessing the pollution around Bali, he said tackling the problem is "something that needs to be done".

His project comes at a critical time for action on the issue. A 2016 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation warned that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean, measuring by weight.

Cheap and abundant

Kumala set up Avani Eco several years ago, with its headquarters on Bali.

The most popular product is the bags made from cassava - an edible tropical root that is cheap and abundant in Indonesia - with the words "I AM NOT PLASTIC" emblazoned on them.

The entrepreneur, who is a biology graduate, is happy to demonstrate the bags are not harmful.

He put some material from a cassava bag into a glass of hot water, watched it quickly dissolve then gulped down the concoction.

"It gives hope to sea animals, they are no longer choking or ingesting something that could be hazardous," he said.