Waste Management Startup, Waste4Change, Receives Investment from Agaeti Ventures and Partners
Jakarta, 9 March 2020 – Waste4Change announced the acquisition of investment funds from Agaeti Ventures together with East Ventures and SMDV which will be allocated primarily to increase the waste management capacity of Waste4Change’s Material Recovery Facility towards 2,000 ton per day in 2024 and the development of waste management governance smart city platforms.
Shortly before the event “Waste Management Solution from Every Stakeholder Talk Show 2020” took place, Michael Soerijadji as General Partner of Agaeti Ventures, and M. Bijaksana Junerosano as Founder & Managing Director of Waste4Change explained the smart city waste management pilot project in Bekasi City to achieve a clean and waste-free Indonesia.
Indonesia is currently in a phase where based on the most recent data, namely in 2015 from the Ministry of Environment & Forestry of the Republic of Indonesia, 69% of Indonesia waste goes to the landfills, 23.5% is managed illegally by being burned, buried, or littered, and only 7.5% is recycled or composted.
It can be seen that currently, the waste management system in Indonesia still relies on the conventional way, which burdens the capacity of its landfills and wastes a lot of materials that should be reprocessed.
Therefore, Waste4Change provides a solid waste management system that is responsible for maximizing the processing of materials that can be reprocessed to support the Circular Economy, educate the public to segregate waste and improve welfare for waste management operators and actors such as garbage collectors.
Waste4Change is experienced in offering upstream to downstream waste management services. Starting from only managing waste from 1 office building to date reaching almost 40 commercial areas and 2000 homes, more and more clients are entrusting their waste management to Waste4Change.
Waste4Change believes that waste management in an area cannot only be improved on its technical aspect but needs to be improved holistically. This is what makes Waste4Change plan to start improving its waste management system on a city scale.
By working with cities and/or districts in Indonesia, Waste4Change hopes to have a greater impact on the achievement of a clean and waste-free Indonesia.
The improvement of city-scale waste management will be carried out by integrating the entire system using IT technology in the form of a smart city platform.
This IT technology will later be worked on together with Sampah Muda, a waste management startup company from Semarang that had joined the Waste4Change at the end of January 2020. There are 4 main features of the smart city platform for waste management, including:
- Monitoring law enforcement in waste issues
- Supporting the financing system for upstream-to-downstream waste management purpose
- Delivering waste management socialization and education to the community – following the standards set by the city/district
- Integrating the work of all waste management stakeholders in one platform
By working with cities and/or districts in Indonesia, Waste4Change hopes to have an even greater impact on the achievement of a clean and waste-free Indonesia. Video about the smart city platform of waste management governance also showed how Waste4Change strategy ahead.
“As one of the venture capital companies in Indonesia, we always try to see the development of startups that have the potential to provide solutions to problems in Indonesia, one of which is related to waste management. With the responsible waste management system developed by Waste4Change for the past 5 years, we believe it can be further developed towards cooperation with the city or district government. Given the huge volume of waste in Indonesia, we think it is time for waste in Indonesia to be managed and processed so that it does not become a waste,”
said Michael Soerijadji, General Partner of Agaeti Ventures, related to the reasons behind the decision to invest funds in Waste4Change.
“Waste4Change has the vision to be a pioneer in providing responsible waste management solutions in Indonesia. We believe that technology support and active collaboration between stakeholders, such as the private sector, investors, government, and the community are the main keys to implement Circular Economy and zero-waste Indonesia. With the experience of 5 years in waste management issues, Waste4Change got many valuable learnings. From when we come as one of the consultants, campaigners, up to managing waste from our clients. The urgency to create a responsible waste management system is also highlighted by one of UNEP’s research entitled “Global Waste Management Outlook”, which states that we need to focus on the waste governance, which consists of law enforcement and regulations, partnership, and mainly the funding mechanisms. Starting from this year, we have engaged in a direct collaboration with the government, one of which is with Bekasi City. We expect an improvement of waste management on a city-scale using IT-based technology of smart city platform.,”
said Mohamad Bijaksana Junerosano, Managing Director of PT Wasteforchange Alam Indonesia before sharing about Waste4Change’s plan to launch an integrated waste management system (smart city) in 2020 and managing application-based waste management for waste recycling partners that has been running since 2019.
“I have known Sano since 2016 at the “Jambore Persampahan Indonesia” event. At that time I have also initiated a platform called “Sampah Muda”, which is a waste management platform that helps connect people who want to recycle their waste with small recycling partners in their vicinity. From there on we frequently discussed the kinds of innovations that can be collaborated between Waste4Change and Sampah Muda. By the end of 2018, we started to see that the amalgamation between Waste4Change and Sampah Muda is the best option. The team from Sampah Muda can further support Waste4Change to have an IT-based system in order for the innovations to have an even more massive and efficient impact.”,
explained Reanes regarding how he and Sampah Muda eventually joined into one management team at Waste4Change.
Read the article in Indonesian version in here.
