Plastik Kembali

Plastik Kembali: Reimagining the Value of Plastic Through Traditional Art + Craft

Plastik Kembali was founded in 2019 by Elissa Gjertson out of her love for the island of Lombok, Indonesia and concern towards sustainable waste management in the area. The initiative seeks to address one of Indonesia’s greatest challenges — plastic waste — through one of its greatest strengths — hand-crafted folk art. Plastik Kembali challenges our imagination on what can be done with recycled plastics by creatively repurposing waste into a resource that is overflowing with artistic potential: sparking a new kind of connection to the very heart of Indonesian culture.

Since the beginning, Plastik Kembali has been working with a group of local crafters–majority of whom are women–to create innovative art using recyclable or sustainable materials, while continuing to use weaving traditions that are still practised in South Lombok. The collective operates as part of a larger network of community-led initiatives from across Indonesia, collaborating with plastic banks and recycling centres in Jakarta and East Java to source the recycled plastics that become the base materials for all their artworks.