With great power comes great responsibility: Indonesian 'Spider-man' clears rubbish

Rudi Hartono has struggled with his campaign to eliminate rubbish that has piled up in his city.

INDONESIA (Reuters) - "With great power comes great responsibility": a proverb popularised by the fictional superhero character Peter Parker who doubles as Spider-Man, takes on a twist in Indonesia by a 36-year-old citizen who is harnessing its "power" to encourage his countrymen to take responsibility for his city’s problem with waste.

Rudi Hartono has struggled with his campaign to eliminate rubbish that has piled up in his city, Pare-pare, located on the southwest coast of Sulawesi island of Indonesia.

Today, he is now a "superhero" dressed in his Spider-Man costume as he goes through sewers, beaches and streets to clean up trash mostly made up of plastic.

"At first, I did the same activity without wearing this costume and it did not attract the public’s attention in order for them to join and help pick up trash," said the 36-year-old Hartono, wearing his red and blue Spider-Man costume. "After wearing this costume, it turns out the public’s response was extraordinary," he added.

Initially, he admits, he bought the Spider-Man outfit simply to amuse his nephew, before others in his town took notice.

"We need a creative role model to foster society’s active engagement in protecting the environment," said Saiful Bahri, a resident.

Hartono usually collects waste as Spiderman before his work at a cafe begins at 7 p.m.. His efforts have helped put a spotlight on the waste issue nationally and he has been interviewed by newspapers and appeared on television chat shows dressed in his Marvel Comics super hero costume.

"Minimising plastic waste is the most important thing to do, because plastic is difficult to decompose," he said while also adding that he hoped the government would throw more weight behind efforts to clean up trash and tighten rules on waste management including on single-use plastic bags.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, generates 3.2 million tonnes a year of waste, with nearly half ending up in the sea, a 2015 study in the journal Science showed. The same study also estimated the archipelago of more than 17,000 islands to be the world’s second-largest producer of plastic pollutants in the oceans after China.

Many parts of Indonesia suffer from having little in the way of organised public services to deal with trash, with plastic waste in particular often ending up in rivers or in the oceans.