I came across this NGO in my Lonely Planet: Sungai Watch. The organisation works to stop plastic and other waste from reaching Indonesia’s oceans by cleaning rivers, installing waste barriers, and involving local communities in the process. Volunteers can sign up for clean-ups at different locations, usually for around four hours. I decided to join one on a Friday morning.
The meeting points are often shared as Google Maps coordinates, because the clean-ups take place far from Bali’s polished tourist scenery — often behind residential areas, along riverbanks, and near illegal dumping sites. Sungai Watch has run weekly volunteer clean-ups since 2022, alongside its river-barrier and waste-sorting work.
I am staying near Keramas Beach on Bali’s east coast, not far from Casa De Brillo (= home). Here, the beach is all black sand and a powerful left reef break, with local surfers flying through the air. But the river we were cleaning that day eventually flows into the ocean. I was curious to see this less visible side of Bali and to learn more about the island’s waste-management challenges.
Three other volunteers -from Italy, Japan, and France- and I joined the regular Sungai Watch crew behind a residential area. People had been throwing household waste into the river: bags of daily rubbish, clothes, mattresses, tiles, cement bags, and construction debris. Along the riverbank, we found burned waste and the remains of daily offerings, including sweet wrappers.
By the time we arrived at around 8:00 a.m., the regular crew was already working. We continued until about noon, then weighed what we had collected: 410 kg of rubbish.
The number was shocking, but what stayed with me was how little visual difference four hours of work made. The crew returns every Friday, yet waste continues to appear in the river faster than it can be removed. One clean-up cannot solve a problem that begins upstream, at household level, and within broader systems for collection, disposal, education, and enforcement.
Bali does have policies aimed at reducing plastic waste, including a provincial regulation on single-use plastics, but implementation and enforcement remain uneven. Illegal dumping and open burning are continuing challenges, which means community-led clean-ups are essential, but they cannot replace reliable waste collection and long-term public education.
Volunteering with Sungai Watch was dirty, physically demanding, and at times frustrating. Still, it was one of the most meaningful things I did in Bali. It made me look beyond the beaches, surf breaks, cafés, villas and perfect sceneries you can see on instagram.
Four hundred and ten kilograms later, the river looked only slightly different. But I did not.
