Free The Sea opens new Material Recovery Facility

Free The Sea has opened a new Material Recovery Facility (MRF) and office space in Batam, Indonesia, expanding our system to stop plastic before it reaches the ocean.

Batam’s lack of waste infrastructure means plastic can easily leak into the environment and eventually the ocean. Our work focuses on stopping plastic at source, building waste infrastructure that keeps plastic waste in the system and out of the sea.

At the heart of the upgrade is our new Material Recovery Facility. The site now has updated systems and machinery designed to sort and prepare household plastic collected from our network of Material Hubs across the island.

Currently, with a team of six sorters, the MRF processes approximately 240-300kg of plastic per day through detailed manual sorting by polymer type and colour. This enables higher-quality materials and improved market value, resulting in approximately 6-7.5 tonnes of sorted plastic per month.

Compared to our previous facility, the new MRF can handle a significantly higher volume of incoming plastic, sort a wider range of materials more efficiently, and increase overall recycling rates.

Our new office brings our updated visual identity to life. It’s bold, vibrant and reflects our belief that waste infrastructure might sound boring, but it works. And our people – the plastic keepers who make this system work every day – deserve a space that matches the ambition behind what they do.

The new facility is a result of months of research and planning to improve how plastic is handled, helping to ensure our system can keep up with the growing flow of plastic collected from communities across Batam.