Silver lining
Six years ago Jinnie Widnyana set up a plastic waste recycling project in her father’s village in the north of Bali. Now she’s launching Bayang. It’s a silver jewellery business Jinnie hopes will raise money for the project.
Interview by Freya Howarth
What does the name Bayang mean?
Bayang [pronounced baa-young] means ‘shadow’. In Indonesian, it is related to the word for ‘imagination’. I liked this interpretation: shadow not as a negative thing, but as a thing that invites curiosity and an open mind. It’s a suggestion, an outline, which leaves plenty of room for interpretation. I also felt it was significant in the context of Bali, where the spiritual world, the unseen – Niskala in Balinese – has such a strong presence in people’s lives and in traditional Balinese life.
What inspired you to start Bayang?
I think that jewellery is a very beautiful thing and it can be something that extends beyond the wearable piece; it takes on its own life as something that can be appreciated artistically. There are lots of really talented silversmiths in my father’s village. It’s an established profession there. I was attracted to the craft and I loved seeing them work in their little workshops. I’d never seen such fine work that was all one hundred per cent hand-made from scratch. I asked if I could watch and learn, and they were very interested to help me learn so they gave me lessons and let me sit down at the desk and do my own thing. Every time I went back to Bali, I would go back to see them and I would practise some more until I decided to start Bayang. I thought that it might be a good idea to start making and selling silver jewellery and then donating part of the proceeds directly to the waste recycling project.
How does the plastic waste recycling project work?
It’s a centralised system for the collection and sorting of plastic rubbish from the municipal areas of the village. We pay people to collect it and then it’s taken to a central depot area where it’s sorted into the different grades of plastic and then sold on to recyclers. There’s no recycling facility on Bali, so most of the plastic is taken to Java to be recycled. This rubbish would otherwise be chucked into the river or simply burned because there’s nowhere else to put it. Our aim in future is to be able to demonstrate to other villages that this is a good model, hopefully give them some funding to help them set up their own system and tackle the issue village by village.
How have your studies informed your approach to these projects?
I studied a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Law at ANU. My arts majors were Geography and Development Studies. Learning about sustainable development piqued my interest in the plastic waste recycling project, but also in more sustainable and ethical production of goods. That fed into the approach I’ve taken to jewellery. Being a small scale, made-to-order operation means that I can minimise the level of waste and control aspects of production to ensure that I’m having a minimal negative impact on the Earth’s resources. I learnt about participatory development, community engagement and stakeholder consultation and the importance of having the support of the community in any endeavour that you wish to undertake. It’s been absolutely essential that we have the community on board with the plastic waste recycling project. With Bayang – even though it’s more of a commercial transaction and I’m paying artisans to make these goods – there still has to be a basic level of respect and understanding.