Badung Deploys 900 Officers to Sort 50 Tons of Illegal Waste

The Badung Environment and Cleanliness Service (DLHK) has deployed around 900 sanitation personnel to comb through and sort waste at the Mengwitani Integrated Waste Processing Site (TPST). This measure is intended to prevent the integrated waste processing site from becoming overloaded when receiving waste.

Hundreds of officers, nicknamed the Ant Army, began work at 05:00 WITA by sweeping the streets. They then gathered at the processing site at 08:00 WITA to sort the waste.

Every day, the personnel must handle around 40 to 50 tons of mixed waste found in the field.

“They manually sort the illegal waste that we find on the roadside every day. Most of what we find is in tourist areas,” said the Secretary of DLHK Badung, Made Rai Warastuthi, on Friday (17/4/2026).

Rai explained that this situation persists despite the government closing the Suwung landfill to organic waste since 1 April 2026. The policy is expected to encourage the public to sort organic and inorganic waste at the source.

However, in the field, officers still encounter a lot of unsorted waste, even dumped carelessly on the roadside.

This condition is commonly found in the Kuta, North Kuta, and South Kuta areas.

“It is placed by suspected individuals, whose waste origin we do not know, who may not yet be aware of sorting. We bring it to the TPST to maintain the tourism image because most of the waste comes from tourist areas,” Rai explained.

TPST Mengwitani Overloaded

DLHK Badung also operates various processing machines, from organic waste sorters and wood shredders to compost mixers, to accelerate handling.

This effort is carried out because the TPST Mengwitani is already overloaded, so the waste volume must be reduced from upstream.

“This practical culture has been going on for years, so we are not yet accustomed to separating organic and inorganic waste. Meanwhile, our downstream conditions here are already overloaded, so we must also reduce from upstream,” he clarified.

Monitoring and Sanctions Tightened

In addition to deploying sanitation personnel, the Badung Regency Government is strengthening monitoring through task forces at the village and sub-district levels and involving the Civil Service Police Unit (Satpol PP).

Strict sanctions in the form of light criminal offence hearings (tipiring) are prepared for residents caught littering.

“The leadership has urged task forces in every village and sub-district to be active, and Satpol PP has planned tipiring hearings every Wednesday for violators. We do this to keep the area clean,” concluded Rai Warastuthi.