Pluit, North Jakarta. (Photo Courtesy of Angela Richardson)
While Angela Richardson isn’t exactly familiar with the law of diffusion of innovations, she is a walking example of it. Richardson is an innovator. And if you are reading this, you have the potential to be an early adapter.
The law of diffusion of innovations, first brought to public attention in 1962 by Everett Rogers, sounds complicated, but in fact is rather simple and clean cut. There are five kinds of people in this world: the innovators, the early adapters, early majority, late majority and the laggards.
Innovators, as Simon Sinek explains in his famous TED talk, are the people who stand in line for hours to buy iPhones, while the laggards only have smartphones because they don’t make rotary phones anymore.
Innovators change things, they see problems and rather than bemoaning them, do something. They start campaigns. They get the word out. They are the change they want to see in the world.
The people whose minds they change are the early adapters, people who say no to plastic bags at grocery and convenience stores, people who recycle or take the bus. Then there are the early and late majority, essentially 68 percent of people, who only do things because celebrities say so or a law compels them to.
The Big Durian creates 6,000 tons of trash a day. Most of it ends up at dump sites, but much of it ends up in the rivers, before finding its way to the ocean.
Tired of seeing piles of trash throughout the city and watching people throw garbage out of their car windows, confident that pemulung (scavengers) will pick up after them, Richardson, the editor of Jakarta Expat decided to do something about it. And so Clean Up Jakarta Day was born, an annual event starting this Nov. 10 that aims to involve local and expatriate volunteers, all fellow Jakartans, working together to make a change.
“With everyone wearing the same T-shirts, we hope people on the streets will stop volunteers and ask what they are doing, in which case volunteers will share their motives for being on the streets of Jakarta at 7 a.m. on a Sunday morning, picking up rubbish,” said Richardson, who was born in Surabaya to an Indonesian mother and English father.
“We want to spread awareness at the same time, especially about the importance of recycling and disposing of rubbish properly. Being held on Hari Pahlawan [Hero’s Day], we hope, like those before us, that we can all join together to campaign for the well-being of Jakarta and Indonesia.”
Richardson is using the bi-weekly Jakarta Expat magazine, along with social media sites, as a platform to get the word out about the project.
The response has been phenomenal.
“The website went live on September 2, and within a couple of days we had several international schools locked in with their own clean-up sites, as well as big companies getting their staff involved and creating their own sites,” she said.
“We also had other communities around Jakarta sign up, as well as hundreds of volunteers keen to join locations we created for others to join: Jalan Jenderal Sudirman and Jalan Kemang Raya.”
The clean-up is meant to raise awareness and create a lasting change throughout the community, schools and businesses involved.
“It’s only when we all join together to get our hands dirty, that’s when things will change,” Richardson said. “We’re encouraging as many community groups to get involved so that our voice can be heard. This is not the time to be a one-man band; this is the time to unite.”
The most innovative thing about the event is that you can nominate your own location, giving volunteers a sense of ownership and involving people around a location that is of significance to you. You can nominate one through the website and volunteer to become the team leader for your location, in charge of recruiting your own volunteers and managing them on the day.
Sabrina Joseph, team leader of the Catholic Fellowship Jakarta’s location at Jalan Bendungan Hilir Raya, sees the event as exactly what the city needs and hopes that CUJD becomes a yearly staple.
“My whole team is just really excited for this because CUJD is really something this city needs. And I hope this year’s event will be such a success that it will become a regular event in the years to come.”
The trash, Richardson explains, will be separated as volunteers collect it, then the bags filled with recyclable items will be picked up by Santa Fe Relocation Services and taken to the Jakarta Green Project in East Jakarta, where it gets weighed, sorted and sold to a recycling company. The money raised will go into supporting Kampus Diakonia Modern, a charity for street children.
“There’s an emphasis on the three Rs — Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” Richardson said.
“The clean-up bags used on the day are reused sugar sacks, sponsored by Coca-Cola Amatil. Every volunteer will be given a T-shirt to wear during the clean-up, sponsored by Nusantara Fabrics, made of 100 percent recycled plastic bottles, and the gloves worn by volunteers will be collected at the end of the day and donated to pemulung and trash pickers in Jakarta.”
Everyone involved hopes Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo will join in cleaning up Jakarta, and there is a petition to that end on Change.org (available through CUJD’s website) that people are encouraged to sign. To get involved, volunteers should visit cleanupjakartaday.org to see what locations are available for them to join, and where volunteers can nominate their own locations to clean up.
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