Roles and interrelation between variables : a study case of plastic waste management in Jakarta Bay

The accumulation of plastic waste in the marine environment has increased the global risk of marine pollution due to its negative impact on land, ecosystems, and especially the food chain and marine organisms. Ineffective plastic waste management has reduced the quality of the coastal environment including community sanitation and health, landscapes, and coastal views, and influenced economic sectors such as tourism, fisheries, and shipping. The economic and public activities within coastal areas have consistently as the source of plastic waste leakage either directly or indirectly. Various variables involved and connected each other, some influential and other existing variables were not working effectively and do not support each other optimally in the system. The policy without limitation on the plastic production and certain type of plastic such as packaging or single-use, bags, and a lack of management capacity have led to the establishment of a burden on current plastic waste management within the coastal and marine of Jakarta Bay. Therefore, the study aims to analyze the roles and interrelation of variables that influence plastic waste management in Jakarta Bay. Public participation through group discussion, interview, and Micmac analysis method was used to identify, map, and analyze their interrelationships, roles, and hierarchy in the plastic waste management system. The results showed that the dynamics of variables’ interaction affect their level of performance and contribution. The variables with strong influence have the potential to strengthen others, while some had a high dependence which was vulnerable to have ineffective performance in the waste management system as their stability relied on other variables’ performance. A group of variables were greatly affected by others and indicates that they had lower influence and higher dependence, while the rest of the variables were relatively disconnected from the system. The key to better waste management is to improve the performance and the quality of relationships of variables that were found in the influential and intermediate quadrants. Furthermore, the indirect influence variables also need to be considered as they have the potential to contribute to the future system strategy or scenario planning.