Indonesia's Sustainable Development Goals Resolving Waste Problem: Informal to Formal Policy

Abstract

Indonesia declares itself as a country-oriented towards sustainable development. However, sustainable development goals are not clearly realized in every government policy, particularly on the environmental issue. This problem invites the important question of how Indonesia realizes or constructs public policy regarding waste problems. This paper aims to examine Indonesian public policies, both initiated by the community (informal policy) and government programs (formal policy). Based on the review of the amount of data and literature, this paper finds two arguments. First, the objectives of sustainable development are substantially stated in the Indonesian regulations. This legal policy is a government action in fulfilling citizens' rights regarding the good environment as guaranteed in the Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. However, this formal policy has not been implemented proportionally. Second, the inefficiency of formal policy is actually patched by informal policies such as policy on personal drinking bottles, policy on the use of organic packing and shopping bags, etc. Nevertheless, in reality, the waste problem in Indonesia is far from what have been expected and still requires more sophisticated solutions both in the formal and informal sectors.