Rural areas are exposed to severe environmental pollution issues fed by industrial and agricultural activities combined with poor waste and sanitation management practices, struggling to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in line with Agenda 2030. Rural communities are examined through a “dual approach” as both contributors and receivers of plastic pollution leakage into the natural environment (through the air–water–soil–biota nexus). Despite the emerging trend of plastic pollution research, in this paper, we identify few studies investigating rural communities. Therefore, proxy analysis of peer-reviewed literature is required to outline the significant gaps related to plastic pollution and plastic waste management issues in rural regions. This work focuses on key stages such as (i) plastic pollution effects on rural communities, (ii) plastic pollution generated by rural communities, (iii) the development of a rural waste management sector in low- and middle-income countries in line with the SDGs, and (iv) circular economy opportunities to reduce plastic pollution in rural areas. We conclude that rural communities must be involved in both future plastic pollution and circular economy research to help decision makers reduce environmental and public health threats, and to catalyze circular initiatives in rural areas around the world, including less developed communities.

Abstract-The population growth in Kepanjen District leads to the waste volume increase. Due to the fact that the landfill in this area is approaching its maximum capacity, the local government needs to find out other alternatives to treat the waste. This article proposes one sort of solutions to prolong the landfill's age through waste minimization involving community participation. Therefore, waste reduction through waste bank has been initiated in Kepanjen District. The primary survey in form of deep interview with related stakeholders has been conducted to gain the data used for community participation analysis. The output of community participation analysis is the level of community participation. The assessment of participation level is used five indicators of participation rate determined by local government. Afterwards, scenario approach is used. The scenario is made based on the level of participation in Kepanjen District. The result showed that Kepanjen District has three kind of participation rate which are low, medium, and high participation. Consequently, the scenarios proposed are pessimist scenario, fair scenario, and optimist scenario for low, medium, and high participation respectively. Pessimist scenario focuses on avoiding the community to do open burning causing air pollution and health injury. Meanwhile, the fair scenario starts to introduce the institution to the community to conduct the capacity building of the community in waste separation. The optimist scenario proposes the implementation of waste bank involving the community.Index Terms-Waste Bank, community participation, waste management scenario. I. INTRODUCTIONRegional growth and development give significant impact on several development aspects including the environment. Population activities and consumptions in urban and rural area have influence on waste increase. The solid waste from households becomes problems of the community and government. The increasing volume of the garbage was not balance with the waste management program. Still many communities manage their garbage traditionally and do not consider the impact on the environment. Besides, the lack of financial viability for the waste management gives the impact on sustainability of the waste management programs [1]. Malang Regency is one of the regions in Indonesia facing this problem. Malang Regency has population growth about 0.89% each year [2]. It leads to increase of waste volume and waste management costs. As Kepanjen District is the capital Manuscript received July 31, 2013; revised October 3, 2013. The authors are with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Brawijaya University, Malang, East Java, Indonesia (e-mail: hasfarmdianpurba@ymail.com, c_meideiana@ub.ac.id, dimas_adrianto@yahoo.com).of Malang Regency, there is a significant development of its urban area. The development in housing sector affects the growth of industry as it provides employment for the people, and vice versa. The waste generation increases as it is proportional to the population grow...

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The Waste Law No. 18/2008 Article 22 and 44 require the local governments to run environmentally sound landfill. Due to the widespread poor quality of waste management in Indonesia, this study aimed to identify the current situation by evaluating three selected landfills based on the ideal conditions of landfill practices, which are used to appraise the capability of local governments to adapt to the law. The results indicated that the local governments have problems of insufficient budget, inadequate equipment, uncollected waste and unplanned future landfill locations. All of the selected landfills were partially controlled landfills with open dumping practices predominating. In such inferior conditions the implementation of sanitary landfill is not necessarily appropriate. The controlled landfill is a more appropriate solution as it offers lower investment and operational costs, makes the selection of a new landfill site unnecessary and can operate with a minimum standard of infrastructure and equipment. The sustainability of future landfill capacity can be maintained by utilizing the old landfill as a profit-oriented landfill by implementing a landfill gas management or a clean development mechanism project. A collection fee system using the pay-as-you-throw principle could increase the waste income thereby financing municipal solid waste management.

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