Standing in a government recycling facility in Bogor, Indonesia, I was surrounded by piles of foul-smelling bags of garbage filled to the brim. In them were plastics, cardboard, organics, and even maggots, mixed together with other waste items that I couldn’t quite make out. The whole facility was filled with these bloated, marshmallow-looking bags, all strewn about in an unsorted heap of bagged refuse. On top of these mountainous piles of refuse were dishevelled-looking men in ragged, heavily torn street clothes, wearing only tattered slippers, as they expertly maneuvered through the mess. One of them picked up a marshmallow bag sitting atop a modest-sized pile, reaching for it with his bare hands before tossing it to the floor, where another man hastily dragged it toward the middle of the facility. Here, many more dishevelled-looking men were huddled together around what seemed like a mini landfill, ripping open bloated bags of waste, and sifting through their contents, again with bare hands, to pick out recyclable material for further sorting. Travelling has always expanded my cultural understanding of every country I visited. But I never expected that travelling would also teach me something about sustainability. As I stood at the facility, visibly bewildered, my first question was Why? Why is this happening here? Why are these men sifting through this waste with their bare hands? Why are they doing this? When I asked a government official, they explained to me that Bogor had no formal recycling system. Recyclable materials were only recovered once mixed waste was collected and sorted at the facility. Travelling has always expanded my understanding of the world, and in that moment, sustainability suddenly stopped being an abstract concept. It became something I could see, smell, and question.
This experience greatly changed how I think about travelling. From this trip, I realized that travelling sustainably is not just about using a reusable water bottle or not littering—although those actions matter. I learned that sustainable travel is also about recognizing that countries vary in how they deal with their environmental issues. I realized then that, as a traveller, it is important to recognize that my own consumption abroad could quickly impact the local community, becoming someone else’s daily reality. In the case of Bogor, where recycling infrastructure and waste management mechanisms are poor, excessive consumption by tourists, even when waste is disposed of properly, can place additional pressure on systems that already struggle to manage local conditions. With this understanding, I plan to reduce unnecessary purchases during my time in Exeter, which reflects SDG 12 set by the United Nations, encouraging responsible consumption (United Nations, 2025). Furthermore, I also intend to advance SDG 11 by expanding on the systems-level understanding of sustainability I developed in Indonesia. During my exchange, I seek to know about the United Kingdom’s own approach to waste management. I hope that by having this systems-level comparative knowledge of environmental issues, I can make sustainable decisions in my future professional career.
