B.S. Ramadan, S. Sendari, B. Ratnawati, A.D. Sakti, A.T. Balasbaneh, M.A. Budihardjo, T. Matsumoto, A.S. Puspita
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Residential open waste burning remains a major environmental and climate challenge in Indonesia. The study objectives were to conduct a comprehensive nationwide assessment of open burning by measuring its prevalence, recognizing spatial patterns, examining material composition, and revealing the behavioral influences that contribute to it. The ultimate objectives of this study were to generate evidence-based insights that can inform targeted policies and interventions to reduce open waste burning and its associated impacts. METHODS: The study integrates multiple approaches, including national datasets, a large-scale household survey, spatial analysis, and topic modelling of qualitative responses. The estimation of waste burning activities was conducted through a framework derived from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's activity and emission inventory, with a crucial improvement that integrated the official administrative classifications of Indonesian villages and cities to more precisely allocate uncollected waste fractions at the subnational level. Primary data were collected via an online questionnaire, yielding 722 valid responses distributed across major regional clusters in Indonesia, including Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Bali–Nusa Tenggara, and eastern regions, characterizing household waste generation, disposal practices, and behavioral drivers. FINDINGS: The results indicate that in the reference year, approximately 26.6 million tonnes of municipal waste were estimated to be openly burned in Indonesia, corresponding to about 23.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Residential combustion represents approximately 70 percent of the overall waste incinerated, significantly surpassing the contributions from landfill fires. Spatial analysis revealed strong clustering of open waste burning in densely populated provinces, particularly on Java Island, with notable intra-provincial variation at the district level. Analysis of material composition revealed that dry and combustible components, including plastics, paper, wood, and garden waste, were disproportionately present in the incinerated waste. Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modelling identified inadequate waste collection infrastructure and household convenience as dominant drivers of open burning. CONCLUSION: This study illustrates that open burning is a prevalent and serious concern in Indonesia, leading to considerable climate and environmental consequences. Given that residential burning constitutes approximately 70% of the 26.6 million tonnes incinerated annually, targeted improvements in household waste collection services present significant opportunities to decrease emissions. © 2026 The author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Diponegoro, Semarang, Indonesia; Department of Electrical Engineering, Universitas Negeri Malang, Jl. Semarang No. 5, Malang, Indonesia; College of Vocational Studies, Institut Pertanian Bogor, 16151, Indonesia; Geographic Information Sciences and Technology Research Group, Faculty of Earth Sciences and Technology, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, 40132, Indonesia; Sustainable Business School, London South Bank University, 103 Borough Road, London, SE1 0AA, United Kingdom; Environmental Sustainability Research Group, Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Diponegoro, Jl. Professor Sudarto, Semarang, 50275, Indonesia; Carbon Neutrality Promotion Division, Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, The University of Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu City, 808-0135, Japan
