We are Earthshot nominees
We are incredibly proud and excited to be nominated for the 2026 Earthshot Prize. Launched by Prince William and Sir David Attenborough, the Earthshot Prize is the world’s most prestigious environmental award, dedicated to accelerating groundbreaking solutions that can repair and regenerate our planet.
Circular Banyuwangi: Ending Single-Use Plastics at Regency Scale
With Circular Banyuwangi PISCES Relay brings together researchers, innovators, governments and communities to demonstrate that a waste-free, ocean-safe future is possible at scale.
Working in Banyuwangi Regency, East Java – home to 1.7 million people across coastal villages, rural communities and fast-growing urban centres – we are designing and implementing Indonesia’s first regency-wide circular plastics economy, ready to be replicated across the Global South.
Why Banyuwangi
Banyuwangi is one of Indonesia’s most biodiverse coastal regions — part of the Coral Triangle and home to UNESCO Blambangan Biosphere Reserve, Alas Purwo and Baluran National Parks and Banyuwangi Marine Conservation Park – with vital mangrove, seagrass and coral ecosystems that support fisheries, tourism, and local livelihoods. A gateway to Bali, it spans dense towns, rural and peri-urban villages, and active coastal communities.
It also faces major challenges: limited waste services, high consumption of low-value plastics and significant coastal leakage. Each year it generates about 180,000 tonnes of municipal waste,15-25% plastic.
Communities here are already embracing waste collection and management, have already taken part in PISCES Living Labs, mapping waste flows, testing refill models.
What Makes Circular Banyuwangi Different
Circular Banyuwangi is distinctive because it delivers a fully integrated circular plastics model at regency scale – across urban, peri-urban, rural and coastal communities where most of the world’s plastic leakage occurs, yet where very few circular solutions have ever been proven.
Our approach is integrated and deeply inclusive, aligning sectors rarely connected, linking social innovation, infrastructure, behaviour change, and governance through evidence-based systems science. PISCES Living labs embed innovation within daily life revealing cultural norms, testing consumer motivations, and enabling solutions that communities actually want and will sustain.
We tackle plastic pollution across the full value chain:
- reducing plastics at source (refill/reuse and circular products)
- improving waste collection, integration and recovery
- strengthening informal waste workers’ livelihoods
- preventing leakage into rivers, mangroves and coral reefs
- shifting household and business behaviours
- using real-time monitoring to guide and replicate impact
If circularity can be demonstrated in Banyuwangi – with its mix of dense towns, fishing villages, farms and biodiverse coastlines – then it becomes achievable for hundreds of similar regions across the Global South.
Who Delivers Circular Banyuwangi
Circular Banyuwangi is led by the PISCES Relay Team, working in partnership with The National Indonesian Government, the Banyuwangi Regency Government, Project STOP/Banyuwangi Hijau, Enviu, Alner and BIOPAC. Our local community collaborators include Emvitrust, Rijig Pratana Wetan Foundation and Osoji Club — with BVRio as our official Earthshot Prize nominator.
