Hetty Kusuma Waty
IPMI International Business School
Amelia Naim Indrajaya
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There are several programs run by EBI:
This program persuades the society to have a good environmental awareness through environmental education in the form of dissemination to the society from young to adult. The educational process is done through seminar activities, green campaigns, exhibitions, workshops and social media movements.
The purpose of this program is to empower people, especially housewives, to have soft skills by providing them with handicraft training and coaching by up-cycling the waste, which has high economic value.
This program is EBI’s community development with the approach of establishing an extraordinary, intelligent and creative community.
Create a creative, domestic, handmade product of Indonesian skilled craftsmen, increasing the waste’s value.
This program invites the society to participate in preserving the environment by donating plastic waste in supporting EBI’s program.
Partnership with ISBANBAN (Istana Belajar Baca Anak Banten) Banten children reading community, giving free education and learning tools for the children around the neighborhood of EBI in Tangerang. In this program, every child can get access to free education by donating plastic waste.
Edy Fajar Prasetyo, a college student of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, is a founder of Eco Business Indonesia and initiated www.ebibag.com. He started the business when he tried to join an environmental based entrepreneurship competition. He saw the plastic waste problem around his neighborhood and started to think about how to reduce it and transform the waste into something useful, with higher economic value. The waste is up-cycled and thus has a longer useful lifetime instead of being thrown away.
He started the project with his friends from the same college with the vision to create green generations who love the environment both regionally and globally, and he wanted to create a good sustainable business model which gives financial independence to support the programs. Then he met Ibu Eli, who is capable in making handicrafts out of waste, who became one of the driving personnel in EBI. She is in charge of giving the soft-skill training of making the handicrafts from the plastic waste. Therefore, in 2014, EBI started to empower housewives in Kedaung, Pamulang, South Tangerang and give them soft skills in making handicrafts from plastic waste. The products are marketed online, through its website www.ebibag.com, and offline, through bazaars, exhibitions, and workshops. Further, the children of the housewives are given free additional lessons every Sunday, only by donating plastic waste already sorted from home. In this program, EBI is partnering with ISBANBAN (Istana Belajar Baca Anak Banten=the Banten children reading community).
Green eco product now is targeting the market of ASEAN by launching its newest product, called premium souvenir "Bebi Face" with caricature illustration (upcycled garbage for souvenirs).
The caricature started to be sold in November 2015. It was also used as a souvenir for King Mongkut Institute of Technology Ladkrabang (KMITL) Thailand, when Edy became one of the Public Lecture on January 2016. The momentum became one of the efforts to open up access to the ASEAN market. The marketing stage to ASEAN itself is a joint collaboration offered by Mr. Matchara Chatwiriya, Ph.D., to collaborate in the Market Place platform in ASEAN.
The order for the products continued to rise over time. In addition, in 2015 the handmade products based on social empowerment in South Tangerang social community in the field of plastic waste utilization were awarded third place for Social Leaderpreneur during the ASEAN Conference (ALC) in Malaysia.
He also plans to design a new product, namely "Re-Bag," a reusable bag to minimize the use of plastic bags. This product is expected to help the government in reducing the number of plastic bags.
The business has several impacts:
The business was still a non-profit program in 2014. Starting in 2015, EBI booked sales of IDR 44 million and IDR 105 million in 2016 with the sales of Bebi Face. Given the turnover of the product, it would be able to reach USD 2 to 3 million after its release.
Edy is confident that the sales of a variety of recycled products with a price range from IDR 5,000 to IDR 500,000 will continue to rise.
"Our turnover every month can reach IDR 5 million per month of the total EBI products and services offered, I believe we will be able to penetrate the ASEAN market so that the sales could be better," he exclaimed.
The profit sharing for the empowered housewives who create the recycled handicrafts is 70%, while the other 30% goes to EBI to fund the activities.
Nowadays, the program that gives a large contribution to EBI’s revenue come from the workshop, training and also consultancy.
EBI’s social and environmental benefit:
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