Speaking after an environmental cleanup in Bekasi, West Java, on Saturday, the minister emphasized the government's commitment to ending the practice of open dumping —the disposal of waste in open heaps without further processing.
"The law has mandated an end to open dumping since 2013, so we are long overdue. Following warnings issued in 2024 and 2025, we are finally seeing serious movement from mayors and district heads in 2026," he remarked.
The effort to end open dumping aims to achieve the target of 100 percent waste management, as outlined in the 2025–2029 National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN).
Nurofiq further noted that the current waste management rate has reached 24.95 percent, a significant increase from 10 percent at the beginning of last year.
The government has set a target to further increase the waste management rate to 64.3 percent by the end of 2026.
In this regard, he urged regional heads to optimize the existing facilities to tackle waste, including waste banks or community recycling hubs, and to promote communal cleanup efforts.
Earlier at the Indonesia Economic Outlook 2026 event in Jakarta on Friday, President Prabowo Subianto outlined Indonesia's strategy to tackle accumulated waste at landfills by deploying micro-scale processing technologies developed by domestic universities to villages.
He expressed hope that the equipment can be deployed to every village and sub-district by 2026 so that waste can be managed at the most local level.
For the large-scale waste processing, the President affirmed that the Indonesian government is initiating the waste-to-energy (WtE) plant projects in a number of regions, carried out through collaboration between the sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia and regional governments.
Related news: Indonesia to tackle waste with micro-scale processing technologies
Related news: Indonesia's waste management rate rises to 24.95 percent
Translator: Prisca Triferna, Raka Adji
Editor: Arie Novarina
Copyright © ANTARA 2026
