What a Landfill in Bali Taught Me About Waste

The Mountain We Built

While in Indonesia, I'd constantly wondering where the trash went. To my awareness, there was no sanitation department or scheduled collection. in the region I stayed, most people either burned their rubbish on the roadside or piled it on street corners until it quietly dissolved out of sight.  One day came a drive to Uluwatu — a temple city at the southern end of the island. Riding into the hazy distance, I saw what appeared to be a massive mountain rising against the skyline. This brought immediate pause because there are no mountains in southern Bali. Except for this one, apparently.

Getting closer, the shape became clear: I was looking at a mountain of trash. The Suwung Landfill in Bali is a peak built entirely from things people believe had been "thrown away." Staring at a landmark, a single thought kept echoing: If one landfill looks like this... what does the rest of the planet look like?

Unfortunately I didnt have to look very far. The uncomfortable truth is that Suwung is not an anomaly; it's just one visible point in a global network of waste we've been conditioned to ignore. Over the past few decades, humans have produced more single-use plastic than in the entire preceding century—nearly half of which is designed to be used for five minutes and discarded. Grocery bags, takeout boxes, water bottles, cutlery. The moment they leave our hands, they usually vanish from the mind. But while memory of them ends in an instant, their physical existence endures for centuries.

We like to imagine that once trash is collected, it remains safely contained. perhaps trapped underground or walled off in landfills like Suwung. But static waste rarely stays put. Landfills spill over, wind picks up light wrappers, rain flushes uncollected litter into storm drains, and waste hold infrastructures often fails.

Millions of tons plastic waste escape into local waterways, eventually floating out into massive oceanic gyres like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. this vortex of trapped trash sits in the pacific ocean and is off the coast of California. It is twice the size of Texas. Out in the open ocean, the sun and waves slowly break plastic down into microparticles. It enters the water column. The water becomes rain. The rain feeds the crops. The fish ingest the micro-debris, and eventually, microplastics in the food chain find their way onto dinner plates.

Nature has never known the concept of waste. Every output from one organism is an input for another. Humanity stands alone as the only species creating materials the Earth cannot digest. That is why the plastic crisis isn't merely environmental—it is existential. How we treat the Earth is a direct mirror of how we value ourselves. When we view nature as something separate, protecting it feels like a chore. But when we realize that we are extensions of and directly affected by nature, living sustainably ceases to be an obligation and becomes an act of self-respect.

Though they help, substantial change will not come solely from government bans on plastic bags. It begins when we reject the cult of convenience. It happens when we refuse single-use culture, demand accountability from manufacturers, and treat our daily consumption as a choice with real life-or-death consequences.

We only get one home. While mountains like Suwung are still growing, the choice to stop feeding them belongs to us.

Reduce ♻ Reuse ♻ Upcycle