[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Plastic floods daily life in Batukaropa In the Indonesian village of Batukaropa, along the Balantieng River, plastic waste has become part of everyday life. Each rainy season, floods wash plastic into rice fields and fish ponds — threatening food, health, and nature. The Balantieng watershed now faces an urgent environmental and public health crisis. Severe plastic pollution is endangering women’s health, livelihoods, and local ecosystems. This mismanaged waste contains hormone-disrupting agents such as PFAS and PBDEs. To cope, women farmers often burn the plastic, exposing themselves and

[vc_row row_content_width="grid"][vc_column][vc_column_text css_animation="none"]South Sulawesi, Indonesia · 2024–present The Balantieng River in South Sulawesi is a lifeline — a source of drinking water and irrigation for thousands of people, flowing through landscapes rich in biodiversity. But the river is under growing pressure. Household plastic waste accumulates along the banks, and heavy rains carry it downstream onto rice and clove fields, into irrigation channels, and out to the coast, where it threatens seaweed farms and marine life. In the Balantieng project, women and youth are stepping forward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] East Java, Indonesia · 2019–2024 The Brantas River is the lifeline of East Java — stretching 320 kilometers, it supplies drinking water to tens of millions of people. But factories discharge untreated waste, plastic chokes the water, and riverside forests are disappearing. In the  AKSI Brantas program, a collaborative effort uniting Indonesian and Dutch organizations to protect and restore the river, women and youth took the lead: they learned to measure water quality, advocated with local authorities, and built green enterprises. Five years on, their approach

Makara and Dutch creative agency NorthernLight are launching a new initiative: YUYU.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] AksiBrantas is an initiative of Makara, the Indonesian environmental NGO Ecoton, the Delft University of Technology and the Dutch consultancy and engineering company Tauw in collaboration with three local authorities: the river authority BBWS-Brantas, the state-owned water supply company Perum Jasa Tirta-1 and the provincial department of Environment and Forestry. AksiBrantas is a unique Dutch-Indonesian partnership: Indonesian environmental activists join forces with authorities and mobilize community groups to stop household waste ending up in the river. Dutch and Indonesian experts research water quality with the latest