Bali Plastic Crisis Turns Into Viral Success With Gary Bencheghib / Sungai Watch

In this episode, Cory talks with Gary Bencheghib, co‑founder of Sungai Watch, about his journey from filmmaker to environmental leader and how his team is tackling plastic pollution in Indonesia’s rivers. Gary explains how Sungai Watch has installed hundreds of river barriers, collected millions of kilos of waste, and used viral storytelling to mobilize communities. He also discusses the challenges of Indonesia’s waste infrastructure, the importance of better packaging design, and how recycled plastic from river cleanups is being transformed into new products.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Gary’s background in filmmaking and environmental storytelling
• Founding Sungai Watch and the development of river‑barrier solutions
• Why Indonesia is a major source of ocean plastic pollution
• Community‑based cleanup models and cultural attitudes around waste
• The impact of viral media in building global support
• Sungai Watch’s 12 sorting centers and daily waste‑processing operations
• Converting river plastic into recycled chairs, trays, and furniture
• The lack of waste collection systems across Bali and Java
• The need for reduction, mono‑materials, and circular packaging design
• How sponsorships and barrier funding help scale cleanup efforts

Resources Mentioned:

Sungai Watch — nonprofit river‑cleanup organization
Sungai Design — recycled‑plastic furniture brand

Contact:

Email: gary@sungaiwatch.com
Website: sungaiwatch.com
LinkedIn: Gary Bencheghib

Closing Thoughts:

Cory and Gary emphasize the importance of simple, scalable solutions and the power of community action in addressing river‑to‑ocean plastic pollution. Sungai Watch’s work demonstrates how storytelling, transparency, and innovation can inspire global participation and move the world closer to a circular, waste‑free future.


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Transcript

0:06

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with Gary Benchigib from Bali and the Tsungai Watch Organization, where they are cleaning up over 4 million kilos of plastic already in over 400 rivers in Bali. Their viral posts are helping fuel their efforts along with their million followers on social media. Thank you for listening. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, 3M. It's Beckroy and Lorax EPI. We couldn't do this show without them. Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Mr. Gary Benchigib. I'm so excited to have you on sir. What you've done is incredible. We got to meet at the Coast Film Festival down in Laguna Beach. I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you, Cory. An honor to be on the show and very excited to share a little bit more about our work to clean Indonesia's rivers. Well, you're doing incredible things. You have a very interesting background. Before we talk about your millions of followers and all the things and the going viral and all of these things, let's talk about your background a little bit. You were an award winning filmmaker or still are, I guess I would say. And how did this lead to conservation and your focus of cleaning rivers? Well, so originally French, originally born in Paris. I think you can't get rid of the French accent. But grew up in Bali for the last 20 years. And I consider myself more Balinese than French today. And with my brother and sister, we started sort of our conservation work 16 years ago as little teenage kids. You when we saw the first plastic wave washing up on the of Bali. And very quickly we realized that if we weren't gonna do anything, who else was gonna step up to fight against it? So it started off as an environmental cleanup group to clean beaches, very quickly realized the power of storytelling, to really showcase to the world the reality of the problem. I ended up going to school in New York studying filmmaking and really using. video and film as the media tool to tell the world what was going on here in the New York. Well, you've done an incredible job and it's exciting to see how you've used media. Our mutual friend Don Meek has taught me the same thing about how we can use media to promote what we're doing for the environment and how that can encourage others to do the same. So I want to commend you for that effort. I wanted to ask why has a ballet become such an important part of the global story of sustainable development in cleaning up the environment? I think Bali is one of the world's most visited islands. So many tourists come here for honeymoon, for vacation, and it sits on the front line of the ocean plastic. Indonesia is the second biggest polluter of marine plastic pollution in the world. And as tourism has grown so fast, with that, there's just so much lack of waste management. And it's sort of a... you know, the perfect size in order to implicate solutions here. People from all around the world settle in Bali to live here. And so you have sort of this incredible blend of, you know, different nationalities of people trying to solve different problems when it comes down to sustainable development. And I think uh the most beautiful and powerful thing about this island is this idea of community. The Balinese live in communities locally. And I think that's where we see models like what we're doing every day at Sungai Watch work because community is so strong and really that's where we can scale the problem. if we can find solutions implicated in Bali on an island wide level, then these are solutions that can be hopefully scaled um throughout the world. Awesome. I have so many questions. I'm so excited to talk to you about this. There's a lot of things here that I think could be used elsewhere in a productive way in cleaning up other environments, areas. But let's talk about SoonGuyWatch that you just mentioned and how it took off with some incredibly viral posts with over hundred million views. Yeah, well, so, Sungai Watch is our full-time nonprofit cleaning rivers here, starting in Bali, now in Java. Sungai means river in Indonesian, so river watch, basically. But, you we started with one idea. How do we stop plastics? About 90 % of plastics in the ocean come from rivers. And so we thought if we could stop it in the river, then we would stop ocean plastic once and for all. This was in the midst of COVID when Bali was closed down to international tourists. We started messaging a lot of different environmental groups around the world that had been trialing and testing different types of trash barriers to stop the flow. We worked with bamboo, PVC pipes, some simple fish nets until we find found our own barrier that we readapted. And that's what we decided to scale. I think it went viral because we realized as filmmakers that if we were to show the consistency of work every day showing up, trying to end plastic pollution in our rivers, people would respond. I think so from setting up these cameras that would take and film time lapses of us cleaning for hours at a time and just consistently posting, showing that it's not just one cleanup that's going to solve this issue, but it's about commitment. It's about ensuring that we can do this with communities. And that's where people started to respond. Today, we have more than 400 of these trash barriers in rivers in both Bali and Java. We've collected more than 4 million kilos of plastics in five years of work. Wow. 12 different sorting centers and hire over 170 full-time staff that we call our river warriors that are pulling about six tons of plastics every day that we try to recycle to the best of our abilities. That's amazing. And what, what you're talking about is it's a barrier that goes across the river, floats on the top of the water, hangs down a little bit to catch the, the waste that floats down the river. That's put there mostly, from, you know, people that litter or literally throw their waste into the water. and then your team, including yourself and your, your siblings go literally go into the water. and pick that, that waste out. Is that what you're saying? Yes, it's very manual intensive. think we realized that if we wanted to scale and solve this problem, we needed to do it as locally sourced as possible. this is a very affordable technology that anybody can build. We've seen these barriers indicated in India and all parts of the world where you literally have these pipes with a metal frame. And there's sort of now the standardized barrier that a lot of groups are using. So we didn't invent the technology by any means. But we were able to use an existing technology and really scale it as quickly as possible. And I think when you're physically in a river with communities and the people that live in that river at the same time, they get to understand waste management in a completely different way. they become part owner of the problem. And the reality is that in Indonesia, rivers are still garbage cans. That's still where people don't want to look at. It's sort of taboo to even face the river. Every household will look away from rivers. And so I think it's really changing that mentality. And so much of it has been the community work. the barriers have been sort of how we've been able to scale the work. throughout different regions in Indonesia. But there's so much more work than that. And I think that's where we see things like we've had to set up these sorting centers that are sort of like our data mining centers where we start looking into brands of the packaging that we're pulling out of these rivers, the type of plastics, and auditing that as well to just simply testing ourselves how can we as best as possible, recycle with the current infrastructures that we have on the island to properly push for circularity. It's amazing to watch what you're doing and how much you've accomplished so fast. Let's hope someday we can change that mentality and turn the rivers back into the pristine viewpoint and make those riverfront properties like we would call them here in the US valuable or more valuable than they are today. That's incredible. So you've got now over a million followers on Instagram. These posts are going viral. You're taking the material out. You're cleaning it, you're sorting it, grinding it, pelletizing it, and then turning that into products that you're selling, including these beautiful chairs. You showed us some different trays that you came when we were in New Earth Project headquarters there in Laguna Beach. Tell us how you're going to scale this process and how you're using social media to get those orders. Yes. um So my watch has been sort of the starting point, but then we were sitting on warehouses filled with waste that were already segregated into these different categories. So we got a uh first hot press machine to produce panels, very trial and error. We would pull out different plastics from our warehouses, testing, testing, testing. It took us about three years to get our final impeccable like plastic sheets that we then CNC cut and turn into furniture. But I think in order to really scale this, I think, you know, I see it two ways. You know, we can implement more recycling capacity at the moment. You know, there is really a lack of waste infrastructure. So we need bigger stations, better machines, and just more teams in general. And that's sort of what we're trying to do throughout Java. So moving away from Bali into... the most populated island in the world. think last week, Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, has now become the world's most populated capital city in the world. 46 million people. Just on Java alone, there's 160 million people. So a lot of people consuming single-use plastics, and unfortunately, just a giant lack of waste management. It's all about the facilities in place. And then from our perspective with Tsungai Design, it's just how can we really make designs that people want in their homes? And I think so. We've started with a lounge chair for outdoor purposes made from 2,000 plastic bags that we call our Humback chair. We've made stools, benches, fully made our goal in the beginning, you know, is how can we make 100 % recycled plastic furniture that is flat back, that basically people can build themselves, you can ship globally around the world. Now, we're starting to play with mixed materials. So, you know, work with recycled teak. We have a new product actually coming out today with recycled chopsticks, satay skewers. and recycle plastic bags with our partner, Chubb Value. So it's always pushing in different ways that we can come up with designs that show our audiences new ways of turning this material into proper circular products. It's amazing to hear all the potential here. What I'm hearing is you've got great ideas. You just need more partners. You need more scale, more infrastructure. And I think that's what a lot of people aren't understanding is there's no waste collection where you live. There's nothing. There's not a system at all in place other than what you've done with your small team and that continues to grow. Do you think it's possible to ever institute a a waste collection system that would be curbside or community based. I mean, that's the dream. I think Bali alone has had multiple groups come in and try it out. But the biggest problem starts at home, starting with separation. Today, most Balinese don't segregate their trash. And so it's just bundled into one organic recyclables, non recyclables. And that's what makes it very difficult. We're sitting on So many open dumps all throughout the island, all throughout the country. Any bridge that you'll drive by, typically, you know, there's an open dump half burning from, and I think that's, know, we need to decentralize waste management. The government is pushing towards micro infrastructure in every village, you know, trying to get villages to own their own waste management. So waste doesn't leave the villages and pollute others. And so that's where, you know, the small sorting station model works really well. We operate 12, so we're very, very small. ah But, uh you know, it's a starting point. And I think more than anything, people are looking for, like, transparency, trust. They're looking for a pickup that will actually come on a schedule that's reliable. And at the moment, you know, that's not happening in Bali. People are sitting, you know, waiting for the truck to come. Sometimes it can take three days a week, two weeks, and that's where they get frustrated and turn to the river and other means uh to dispose of their waste. So I think that's probably the most important. When you're building this full system of waste collection, yeah, people need to trust and understand. the full viability of the program. so actually, you know, earlier last month, the Indonesian government announced a full budget to introduce waste energy facilities all around Indonesia, which is quite exciting. um The current president wants to put waste behind. But, you know, it's an incredible thing of building these facilities and it'll take about two years to develop. But the biggest problem still is collection. And I think if facilities and infrastructure come, we need to make sure that people are ready to buy in in terms of the right collection scheme program. So that's something as well that we're uh trying to help and guide the government. Well, it's exciting to see. had the head of the waste pickers association for Kenya on this show before, and he mentioned very similar growing pains. Well, we need a truck, we need this, we need more sorting facilities. And it sounds like you have similar pain points that need to be addressed and it just takes investment. like you said, it takes teaching these people that live there that Hey, we're going to do what we say we're going to do. And we're going to actually show up. That's an excellent point. I think a lot of people listening to this podcast are in the packaging industry. And we would love to have your advice for how we can make packaging more sustainable so that if it does get into the environment, it's easy to collect, it's easy to recycle. I think the message for Packagers, we do an audit every year of the most polluting brands in Indonesia that we find in our data. And I think one of the conversations that we have with these Packagers is how can we properly design for the real world? When plastics enters the waste stream, enters the river, Will that plastic be recycled when our team's collected? Unfortunately, so much of the packaging nowadays that is scattering the market is multi-layered plastics that can't be recycled here in Indonesia. And I think that's where the problem is. It's incredibly difficult to separate from aluminum foils to the plastic layers within that packaging. So beyond anything is how can packaging be as circular as possible to ensure that it becomes if it ends up in a river. ah The efforts that we take to jump into these toxic waters, we need to ensure uh full, viable circularity. But beyond anything, think one of the terms that we can't ignore is reduction beyond anything. um Reduce. ah wherever possible to ensure that it doesn't, yeah, we don't produce unlimited packaging and it's controlled from the get-go. Yeah, that's it. Use less. Minimize the material, use mono materials. It sounds like that's very helpful, if they are a one material substrate for plastics in particular. And then looking at other materials, paper-based things like that, that are compostable, recyclable, upgradable, all these good words that we like to use in the industry. Those are great ways of looking at packaging too. When you ship out your... your chairs to people. Are you packaging them in corrugated boxes? At the moment, we are shipping out directly into 100 % recycled cardboard. So that's the current packaging we're using. But it's sort of flat back. So it is made from plastic. At the end of the day, 100 % recycled plastic bags. So it is quite sturdy in the shipping process. I'll need to place an order with you to get one of these chairs. When we met, you mentioned that you just had an order for 20 of the same color and it was very difficult because you didn't have that much of that one color. And I think that's such a fascinating issue to deal with. I mean, we're such a small scale production and we're obviously trying to do our best to ensure that customers don't wait too long for us to connect that one color bags. But everything is sorted by hand manually and we really try to... Every color is the original color of the bags themselves or the plastic that we use. That's something that we're struggling with at the moment. The more demand for the products, that will mean the more cleanups and the more sales generate uh more funds for the cleanup initiative. So it's really exciting to run a business that can support simultaneously the growth of the cleanup organization. right. So other than ordering from you, how can people support your efforts? How can they donate or supply different equipment or what kinds of things are you looking for? uh Yeah, I think, we're on this mission of, you know, how can we clean in the next few years, a thousand rivers across Indonesia, Indonesia's dirtiest rivers. And if we do that right, you know, we're in again, the second most polluting country of marine plastic pollution in the world. So that would really reduce the overall amount and impact that it has on the ocean. We're constantly looking for barrier sponsorships. So if you're a company or an individual, you can help us sponsor a barrier and you get your name and logo on the actual barrier. And I think that's been so far one of the quickest ways that we've been able to scale our program. now have more than 400 of these barriers that we set up. So it's been really exciting. But beyond anything, think, you know, if you're an individual listening to this conversation, you can share our mission through, you know, our Instagram, Soongi Watch, that Cory maybe can link in the description. And yeah, I think, you know, beyond anything, it's really about expanding the work. When you're standing knees deep, knee deep in a river, you know, it is... like a whole other world that many people haven't experienced. ah You're literally in the trenches and it sometimes feels like we're fighting against an impossible mountain that we need to conquer. I think it's, for us, it's been about showing up every day, getting more people with us. But just this conversation with Hikari today hopefully can open up more opportunities. So yeah, beyond anything, it's sharing that mission and ensuring that within our generation, if we can end plastic pollution, create proper infrastructure, I'm pretty positive that before I get to retire, hopefully one day I get to retire from the rivers, but that's the dream. We're still young and still so much work ahead of us. Yes. Yes. Let's get you a vacation for once. Well, can I ask? I think people will ask how much is a sponsorship? Maybe it's, and it probably depends on how wide the river is. And can you give us kind of a range of uh investment there? So one of our, like our smallest barrier starts at $3,500 for a full year of operation. And obviously that can scale depending on how big the barrier is, but that's really to get your logo and brand on the actual barrier. Then, you know, we offer multiple different packages. have like monthly subscription on our website as well available, you know, for smaller donations and individuals just wanting to support the mission. So I think it really ranges, but beyond anything, you know, for any of you listening, one of the things that we also push for is, you know, people to come and experience what we are experiencing every day, because it is a life changing experience for sure. You know, being in the river, understanding the problem. So, you know, we host like regular community cleanups open for volunteers. Aside from our daily grind, you know, we also get people to jump in with us. So. You know, even Cory, if you're ever in Bali, we'll definitely invite you in, give you a waiter and show you the real plastic pollution problem, which I'm sure you've seen already. that would be incredible. I would be honored to do that with you. And I'm sure my thoughts would change quickly on how intense this process is and how hard the work is. So that's great to know. So people can actually call you up or message you on Instagram. Is that the best way or is it email? What's the best way to connect with you? Yeah, so best way would be through email. So gary at soon I watch.com or, you know, just going through our website and filling out the contact us info, but please, please do get in touch with me personally. I'd love to. uh chat more about the potential collaborations uh or if you just want to know a little bit more about our cleanup efforts, always excited to have a conversation about plastic and how to protect more rivers. Keep up the great work, sir, and congratulations on your success. And I can't wait to support you by putting out this podcast and someday coming to Bali to join you in the rivers. So thank you. Thank you so much, Cory.