Hotel, Restaurant and Café Operators in Indonesia Urged to Manage Waste Independently

JAKARTA, KOMPAS.com — The Ministry of Tourism (Kemenpar) has again urged hotel, restaurant and café operators (horeka) to manage waste independently.

“We have already prepared a guide for waste management in Horeka, and there will also be a roadmap going forward,” said Rizki Handayani Mustafa, Acting Deputy for Industry and Investment at Kemenpar, when asked by reporters after the press conference of the National Tourism Coordination Meeting (Rakornas Pariwisata) on Wednesday 20 May 2026.

The call was reinforced by Kemenpar following the Minister of Environment and Forestry Regulation Number 75 of 2019 on the Waste Reduction Roadmap by Producers. The regulation covers obligations of producers in the manufacturing, retail, hotel, restaurant and café sectors to undertake waste reduction activities, including the obligation to prepare and implement waste reduction through the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle).

Not long ago, Bali Governor Wayan Koster urged the 1,980 hotels, restaurants and cafes recorded in Denpasar to manage their waste independently. “We must manage our own waste Horeka; previously some were not managed in-house and relied on collectors; henceforth they must manage it themselves,” Koster said, as quoted by Antara, Thursday 21 May 2026.

The Bali Provincial Government is calling Horeka operators to participate in resolving the waste issue ahead of the total closure of the Suwung landfill. Prolonged waste problems would affect their businesses as well.

In addition to addressing the waste problem, local governments are pushing ahead with infrastructure development and other issues to ensure the tourism sector is safeguarded when all runs smoothly. “We must tackle this waste issue together. If the waste issue is well managed, traffic congestion is addressed, hotel occupancy rises, employees will continue to earn income, PHR Denpasar can rise, whereas if tourism is disrupted, tourist numbers will fall and hotel occupancy will automatically drop,” Koster said.

“So we have identified that actually almost all hotels, especially five- and four-star ones, already have a waste-management system. Three-star hotels also have a waste-management system,” said Rizki.

The problem arising is the lack of alignment among several regulations, where hotel operators feel the responsibility for management has been shifted to third parties.