Conserve | Rubbish Free Rinjani
When we first started Chickenfeet Travels, we wanted to use our platform to bring people to off-the-beaten-track places. We never wanted to “compete” with everyone else in well-established destinations.
As with many of our adventures, it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and meeting the right people.
In 2016, my very good friend Steve was backpacking around Southeast Asia; at different points in his life, he has been a dive instructor, trekking guide, and sailor in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest US.
When he was in Lombok, I tried to talk him out of trekking Rinjani because of its reputation as the Rubbish Walk or Trash Trail, but he really likes climbing mountains, especially ones with lake views. Because he is a seasoned mountaineer, he didn’t want a guide, he didn’t want a porter, and he was planning to eat nuts and granola for his trek.
He walked up and down Senaru village to find someone that would rent him a tent and sleeping mat, but no one was willing to, but then he met Andreas. Steve went up the mountain and returned a couple of days later to return the gear and pay. Andreas refused to take his money and was happy he had a great time. When Andreas asked Steve where he was headed next, Steve even got a free ride to Bangsal Harbour with his other customers; there was an extra seat in the car. Steve immediately told me about Andreas; we have worked with him since.
I learned that Andreas, having worked his way up from porter to guide to organizer, remembers his humble beginnings and ensures that his porters do not carry more than 20kg each. In addition, he is one of the few organizers who truly does carry in and carry out all their rubbish, AND they dig proper latrines for their guests.
There are two overarching issues we can see in Rinjani:
Social
We continue to work with Andreas because he treats his guides and porters properly. Unlike most other organisers trying to cut costs, Andreas will send up an extra porter so that weight is distributed evenly, maxing out at around 20kg per porter. We have seen porters carrying 30-35kg; if you have seen some of them, that is more than half of their body weight. I like to be nosy and randomly ask the porters and guides we see on the trail who their favourite boss is, and Andreas’ name will always pop up. Andreas also pays slightly above the daily rates because he knows how hard it is on the body.
Environmental
When the porters are not carrying as much weight up, they are also not completely exhausted. The porters we trek with arrive at the rest stops (POS) and clean up as much as possible before preparing the customers' meals. And when they pack up camp, they ensure that it is spotless. They will always leave their campsites better than when they arrived. The problem is too big to tackle, but we keep educating and instilling hope in the porters and guides that doing little is better than doing nothing.
As we started to send more customers up the mountain, we continuously heard about the state of the mountain. Since 2015, I always travelled to South Lombok to surf, and when I was there, I would make my way up to Senaru to hang out with Andreas and talk about how we can improve things on the mountain. He told me of a time Rinjani was truly rubbish-free when the National Park made efforts to ensure that porters were bringing down and picking up after anything left behind. In short, they were compensated for their efforts.
Then, massive earthquakes hit in July and August of 2018. Tourism came to a grinding halt, and the mountain was too dangerous to climb. The earthquakes left more than 500,000 without homes. They spent the second half of 2018 living in fear due to aftershocks and tremors; this continued through 2019 as the rubble was slowly being removed and their homes were being rebuilt.
At the end of 2019, we started Rebuild Rinjani with Andreas in an effort to expedite the rebuilding of homes at the foothills of Rinjani, where most of the devastation occurred. Along with rebuilding homes, we wanted to take advantage of the superstitions flying around. The mountain was angry because it was being disrespected with rubbish left and burnt. They wanted to do better, and we wanted to help. We had a plan for the next season which starts in March and then…COVID.
Over the pandemic, we have discussed the best ways to transform Rinjani back into its natural glory days. In October 2022, we had planned for concentrated efforts at the start and end of the season. A total of four trips up the mountain, with the guides and porters that understand and care, to pick up everything everybody before us left behind.
Rubbish Free Rinjani Trip 1
Our first trip up was 27-30 April 2023, and it was by chance that I had a couple of Indonesian friends who were super keen to join, one with quite a following on TikTok. For the three of us, it was our third time up Rinjani. I even convinced Andreas and Juki, who have “retired” as guides, to come up for fun, lol.
It was honestly refreshing trekking with Indonesians, as opposed to my other two trips up with tourists. I saw them being affected by the damage their fellow citizens were doing to their treasured mountain. I could see how frustrated and deflated they were getting. They could speak with their Indonesian counterparts about taking responsibility for their own rubbish and hopefully more.
We also went during Lebaran (the Muslim equivalent of Chinese New Year and Thanksgiving), which really exacerbated the problem. The National Park supposedly gives only 300 permits a day. Thousands of people were camping at the lakeside, and as my Indonesian friends put it, “It’s worse than a market.”
We had grately underestimated the amount of rubbish that we would come across.
We were able to bring down about 100kg of trash but it is honestly a drop of water in the ocean of trash up there. We had to focus our efforts on the smaller stops along the way and picking up the tiny pieces of candy wrappers dropped on the trail. And to be honest, we were all a bit disheartened by what we saw and the little impact that we had.
We learned a lot during our four days together. We brainstormed at every meal, and we got the porters' input as well. We had the perspectives of 1 foreigner, 2 Indonesians, two guides, seven porters, and two children. And a brand new plan was hatched…
Social Media for Good
Mimi, who accidentally became TikTok famous, did her magic on her socials. Over the following week, she posted about what she experienced on the mountain, and we got over half a million views and hundreds of shares. Within a week, Sembalun village also started their clean-up efforts on their trails. About a month later, even my grandpa saw the video via WhatsApp; someone in his old man, Chinese Singaporean circles, recognised me as his granddaughter and sent it to him!
But we have a problem: where does all the trash go?
Closing the Loop
We received so much attention for our efforts that Mimi ended up introducing me to Get Plastic.
Get Plastic Foundation created a machine that essentially pressure cooks clean plastic waste into usable diesel and petrol using LPG gas. With every new build, they are able to improve its function; the last model converts 5kg of plastic into 5L of diesel fuel.
Meet them where they are
We are currently (May 2024) hatching a plan to work with the Get Plastic Foundation to install a machine in Senaru to redirect as much of the trash from Senaru Village and the mountain and create usable diesel for farming equipment and some excess for petrol.
Since we were introduced to Get Plastic last year, the guides have been speaking with the neighbours, the little shop owners, and the whole village to clean and keep their plastics. But it is a chicken and egg problem. They need to see how well the machine works to believe in the whole process, yet we have to balance it out with the knowledge and commitment of the community to decide WHEN to install the machine.
If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it is truly important to trust the process and timing and not force things to happen.
As always, we keep pushing things forward slowly, we get ready behind the scenes, and when the timing is right, we will execute.
Stay tuned.
