In Bekasi, recyclable waste is not simply as something to throw away. It is also just as something that can be given back to the community.

At Masjid Baitul Makmur, in Desa Telaga Murni, Cikarang Barat - Bekasi, residents can bring something to the mosque that most people would never think to call charity: their waste.

Plastic bottles, cardboard, used cooking oil and other materials can be separated at home and brought to the mosque, where they are collected and sorted. Larger quantities can also be picked up by PAJERO, Pasukan Jemput Rongsok, or a squad that collects the scraps. The materials are then sold to buyers and waste collectors, and the proceeds are used to support programmes for the surrounding communities.

Rather than asking people simply to recycle, the initiative invites them to treat recyclable and economically valuable materials as a form of sedekah -- charitable giving.  

That idea sits at the heart of GRADASI (Gerakan Sedekah Sampah Indonesia), through collaboration involving the National Action Plan Team for Handling Marine Waste, the Indonesian Ulema Council, UNDP, the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Investment, and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. With the initial support from the Embassy of Norway through capacity building activities, the initiative was further strengthened through the Clean Rivers programme. This support helped provide waste-management infrastructure and expand GRADASI to additional houses of worship within its community network. The idea is not simply that waste can be recycled, but that changing the meaning attached to waste may also change what people do with it. 

A recycling system works when people separate their waste before it enters the bin. At home, that might mean putting plastic bottles aside, keeping cardboard dry, or collecting used cooking oil instead of throwing it away.  

These may seem like small decisions, but they are the first step in giving waste a second life. The challenge is making those decisions part of everyday life, not just something people do during a campaign or collection drive.

Baitul Makmur provides dedicated containers where residents and worshippers can bring recyclable materials. Through PAJERO, larger quantities can be collected directly. But the system depends on repeated participation. People have to remember to separate waste, store it and bring it to the mosque or arrange for it to be picked up.  

GRADASI builds on a practice already embedded in community life: giving. In Indonesia, sedekah is a voluntary act of charity. GRADASI applies that principle to materials that still have value but might otherwise be discarded. Instead of giving money, people can donate recyclable materials. Once collected and sold, the value generated can return to programmes run by the mosque.

Waste, when collected and handled properly, can hold real economic value. The Ministry of Environment estimated that Indonesia's waste banks could generate around Rp92 billion in economic value each month, highlighting the value that can be recovered when recyclable materials are collected and managed properly.

This figure points to something often overlooked: waste is not always the end of a product’s life. When separated and collected properly, some of what we throw away can re-enter the economy as a resource, and, in places like Baitul Makmur, its value can go one step further, becoming support for the community.

Money from sedekah sampah help funds programmes run by the mosque, serving the surrounding community. These include religious education for children, free English classes, and Quran lessons in Braille taught by Furkon Hidayat. To further support visually impaired community, the mosque also improved accessibility, such as creating level pathways between the prayer room and bathrooms to help them move around independently.  

When the programme was introduced in 2021, Muhammad Suhapli, who leads the mosque’s management body, recalls strong public enthusiasm. Residents and communities brought recyclable materials ranging from paper and plastic to old equipment. During the programme’s early period, the value of the waste collected reached approximately IDR 25-30 million per month.  

For Suhapli, however, the programme’s larger purpose is not primarily to generate revenue. It is to change the way people understand responsibility for waste: everyone has a role in addressing it. A collection drive by PAJERO can fill a truck in an afternoon. What Suhapli is after is more that the people sorting waste at home without being asked.

Revenue is easy to count. Habit isn’t.

Baitul Makmur is part of a broader movement testing whether giving waste a different meaning can encourage people to separate and donate it. One collection event at the mosque gathered 6.8 tonnes of donated waste. By the end of 2024, participating institutions and communities had collected more than 1,108 tonnes of waste, involving nearly 1.3 million people and generating more than IDR 5.3 billion in transactions. What began in places of worship had expanded to universities, schools and pesantren, government offices, companies and hundreds of community groups.  

The success of the movement, however, starts at home. How people sort and keep their waste can determine whether it still has value when it reaches the collection point. “A wet bottle has almost no value for the waste collector. The same goes for cardboard that has been rained on,” says Suhapli. “Used cooking oil is the hardest. Once it is mixed with water or spilled, it is gone, no one wants to buy it.”

For World Cleanup Day, the story of Baitul Makmur offers a simple reminder: tackling waste does not always start with cleaning up what has already been thrown away. It can start much earlier, with how we see the things in our hands and whether we choose to throw them away or give them another purpose.

At Masjid Baitul Makmur, that second choice has become an act of sedekah. What looks like waste can still have value, and what seems too small to matter can, when collected together, help make a difference.