Pulau Plastik: A documentary about Plastic

May 5, 2021 | R.O.L.E. Foundation

On Earth Day, the Pulau Plastik documentary premiered in the cinema. In Bali it aired  from 22-25 April 2021. Visinema Pictures has been kind enough to give R.O.L.E. Foundation 5 ticket vouchers to watch the documentary.

Pulau Plastik Film overview

Pulau Plastik (Plastic Island) is a documentary film by Visinema Pictures, Kopernik, Akarumput, and Watchdoc to tackle the single-use plastic issue in Bali and beyond. The documentary stars Gede Robi, Balinese vocalist of grunge-band Navicula, Tiza Mafira, a young lawyer from Jakarta, and Prigi Arisandi, a biologist and river guard from East Java. The three figures explore the extent of plastic pollution in Indonesia and how it impacts our health.

The goals of the campaign

Based on Pulau Plastik’s website, the main goals of this campaign are: 

  1. To change people’s behaviour, so they can apply the 3R principles for single-use plastic.
  2. To support Bali’s government policy concerning single-use plastic.
  3. To encourage the adoption and implementation concerning single-use plastic policy at national scale.

The documentary showed the beach clean up activity in Jakarta, a paper importer that smuggle plastic waste inside the paper pack, and a tofu factory that burns plastic as a fuel. 

How plastic impacts our health

In the documentary, it also shows Ecoton researcher Andreas Agus Kristanto did a research with 100 samples of feces of Indonesian with different backgrounds. The result, all of the feces being tested is positively contained in microplastic. Prigi also did research previously to check the microplastic contamination in the fish from Brantas River and it resulted in positive.

Watching Pulau Plastik Film is such an eye opener to the real plastic crisis problem. By watching this documentary, we will realize that what we give to nature will always come back to us, and we need to change that. It is possible to recycle and upcycle some types of plastic, see R.O.L.E Foundation’s volunteer ideas here, but the most important thing is to reduce the plastic in the first place. To learn more about Pulau Plastik, click here.