The 30 year-old family business where she works, Daya Selaras Group, an Indonesian corrugated carton manufacturer started by her father, Hendriko Wijaya, was struggling with a ban on importing waste paper, the raw material used to make packaging, chipboard, and corrugated cardboard. “I remember thinking, we’re such a huge country that produces so much waste,” she told Eco-Business. “How is it possible that our internal waste supply is still not enough to meet industry demand?”
An article she read in National Geographic in 2020 was enough to convince the 30 year-old of the potential of the circular economy for paper packaging in Indonesia. After taking a post-graduate course to learn the fundamentals of the circular economy, Wijaya led the creation of a new unit that would transform Daya Selaras Group into a circular business. Previously, the company’s trucks would only deliver packaging to customers. Under the new system, they would also collect and return packaging waste to the company’s facilities to recycle it. This would minimise fuel consumption and lower transportation costs of the raw materials.
“
My father was tougher on me than the non-family directors. He didn’t support me immediately. I had to prove to him that it was a workable business model.
Cynthia Handriani Wijaya, chief corporate officer, Daya Selaras Group
Wijaya’s push to spin off Daya Selaras Group’s recycling arm, Daur Ulang Selaras (DUS), helped her win a place in Eco-Business’ Sustainability Leadership A-List Youth 2025, which recognises the region’s most impactful young sustainabilty professionals. Under her leadership, DUS recycled 67,000 tonnes of paper waste last year, which saved the equivalent of 1.1 million trees and offset 16.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Wijaya wants Daya Selaras Group to become Indonesia’s number one business-to-business waste management platform over the next five years. But achieving scale will largely depend on informal waste collectors, who make up 40-60 per cent of the company’s waste supply. “Often the waste paper we receive from waste collectors is too moist. We need waste collectors to segregate their waste paper better,” says Wijaya.
In this interview, Wijaya talks about the birth of a circular economy startup in Indonesia, and the challenges and opportunities in scaling the business.
Where did the idea for a circular business for waste paper come from?
My background is in finance, accounting, and investing. I didn’t have a good understanding of sustainability back in 2020. But I read an article in National Geographic during Covid that stirred something in me.
The cover image and headline for the National Geographic feature article, How a circular economy could save the world. Image: National Geographic
The article was headlined How a circular economy could save the world. The circular economy requires a whole system change. Which is essential if you want change to be lasting – to be truly sustainable.
The principles of the circular economy aligned with what we wanted to do at Daya Selaras Group – collect waste paper, recycle it into boxes and packaging, collect the packaging waste from our customers using our logistics arm, and repeat the process.
After reading the article, I took a Cambridge University post-graduate course in sustainability and circular economy. My family business was the case study. I was able to work out the processes and partnerships I would need to make circularity work. In 2021, we pitched the idea to the board. The CEO, my father, is a long-term thinker and is open to change. He said, “let’s try it”. Everything has fallen into place since. Growth of the circular business has been exponential.
Tell us about the state of paper recycling in Indonesia.?
Indonesia produces a lot of waste. But because of poor waste management infrastructure and a low recycling rate, industrial paper mills have had to import waste paper from overseas to recycle into the brown paper used in packaging.
Indonesia’s waste system is largely reliant on the informal sector. Karang taruna, or waste collectors, go door-to-door collecting industrial estate waste boxes and paper with wooden trolleys. We do see some waste management trucks doing the rounds, but pouring more funding into waste management infrastructure have not taken off. The logistics costs of collecting waste – which is a low-value good – are too high if you don’t have the scale or the network. The economics just don’t add up.
What happened after you took the sustainability course?
We spun off DUS as a business within the group. We then went to each of Daya Selaras Group’s subsidiaries to find ways to collect and reuse the paper packaging in their supply chains. That’s where my role as chief corporate officer came in. It was my job to coordinate with the heads of all of the businesses we supply to, to get the circular model turning.
How did DUS get off the ground?
Daya Selaruas Group is one of the top five packaging producers in Indonesia. It supplies to many multinational fast-moving consumer goods firms, which understand our motivations for a circular business model. Plus, the multinationals are grappling with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations in Europe. We could help them comply as their supply chain partner and share the traceability data they need. We worked with the Indonesian Packaging Recovery Organisation (IPRO) which was set up by Nestlé to help the company meet its EPR obligations. We were IPRO’s strategic partner for paper packaging waste.
A Daur Ulang Selaras waste paper recycling warehouse in Tangerang, Jakarta. In 2024, the company recycled 67,000 tonnes of paper waste. Image: Daya Selaras Group
That was the starting point. We then worked with the e-commerce firms, as e-commerce waste had skyrocketed by 50-60 per cent during Covid, when everyone was doing online deliveries. I met with the sustainability team from GoTo [the parent company for e-commerce firm Tokopedia and ride-hailing brand Gojek] and pitched them our circular model that we had worked on with IPRO. They realised that they had a lot of carbon waste in their distribution centres, and so we were able to work with them on a circular packaging system. We then worked with Blibli [an e-commerce brand funded by Indonesian conglomerate Djarum group] on a similar system.
What was the next step?
In 2021, we set up a sustainability team. We linked the key performance indicators of the different subsidiaries with environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics. We produced a sustainability report, even though we’re a private company, so technically we didn’t have to. We wanted it to show to our customers and partners that we were serious about traceability.
DUS then became its own profit centre. Suddenly our customers wanted to buy more from us, because we could give them the data they needed and we could recycle their waste as well. It made good business sense. That’s the thing about sustainability – it has to strike the right balance between social, environmental and economic factors.
Is So DUS is making money?
It launched in 2021 and is now profitable. Last year, DUS recycled 67,000 tonnes of paper waste. Now we’re taking a different route. We created an app called RE-DUS, which allows not only our customers but the broader ecosystem to recycle their paper waste. If you’re a small business owner or an individual, you can schedule to have your waste picked up. We’ll pay to take it from you. We’ve started collecting PET plastic bottles now too.
How is the business progressing?
We use the Circular Transition Indicator (CTI), which was developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, to gauge our progress. CTI gives a recovery rate indicator for waste. In 2022, it was 27 per cent for DUS. In 2023, it doubled, to 45 per cent and in 2024, it grew to 52 per cent. This year, we’re looking to grow our CTI score by another 5-7 per cent. We hope that the RE-DUS app will help significantly increase our recovery rate, as it has allowed us to broaden our waste supplier base.
Our ambition for the RE-DUS app is to help people realise that they can make money from waste – that it has value. Awareness is generally low, and we want to change that. The RE-DUS app provides the user with a contribution report, which tells them how much money they’ve made as well as how much they’ve diverted from landfills and reduced emissions.
We want to expand the reach of the app, so we are opening another waste management warehouse later this year in Bandung, West Java. The Bandung area has been affected by the decline of the textile industry and the government is keen on us opening there to give the region an economic boost.
My 5-year ambition is to become the number one business-to-business waste management and circular economy platform in Indonesia.
An internal Daya Selaras Group event in 2023 to thank employees and their families for working during the Covid-19 pandemic. Recycling arm Daur Ulang Selaras was spun off from the parent company in 2021. Image: LinkedIn
What challenges have you faced in growing the business?
The biggest challenge has been communicating circular economy concepts to the informal waste collectors we work with. About 40-60 per cent of the waste we use comes from the informal sector, while the rest comes from the industrial sector. Waste collectors are more worried about putting food on their tables and making enough money to send their kids to school than they are about circular economy concepts so it has been harder to persuade them to use the RE-DUS app.
Quality is another issue. Often the waste paper we receive from waste collectors is too moist. We need waste collectors to segregate their waste paper better. That way they can get a better price for it. We also want to work with more waste collectors on funding and logistics. If they sell directly to paper mills, they will only get paid a few weeks or even a month later. But if they work with us, they can get paid right away in cash, and we can help them by picking up their collections in our trucks.
Tell us about the challenges of working in a family business where your father is the CEO. Do you feel that your position of privilege has helped you realise your ambitions?
Back in 2020 when I wanted to start this venture and pitched the idea to the company directors – Daya Selaras Group is half owned by family, half owned by non-family directors – I feel like my father was tougher on me than the non-family directors. He didn’t support me immediately. And I had to prove to him that it was a workable business model. That’s why I took the Cambridge University sustainability course.
I do agree that privilege can be leveraged to push your agenda. If my father wasn’t CEO, it would have been more difficult to get all the different group subsidiaries on-side with the circular model.
Your job – as chief corporate officer – is similar to the role of an in-house chief sustainability officer (CSO) in that you need to look at the bigger picture to identify how different departments can work better together to drive efficiencyies. How have you gone about earning the trust and respect of colleagues in other departments?
My father is the type of person for whom competence and professionalism are very important. I was not going to walk into a senior role just because I am his daughter. I had to start at the bottom.
I started out at Daya Selaras Group as an internal auditor, which is similar to the CSO role in that you need to go from department to department asking for data and studying their processes. But it was a great learning experience. I visited the factories and was able to understand different parts of the business, how things work, and to see things from a range of perspectives.
When I moved into the new role [of chief corporate officer], I had to re-engage with people across the company. This time my job was educational, informing my colleagues of the value of sustainability and why it matters to Daya Selaras Group. You have to have earned respect and gained credibility to be able to do this, and that took time. If I had just joined the company and said “Okay, everybody, we’re going do this circular economy thing” I don’t think the transition would have been as smooth.
What advice do you have for younger sustainability professionals?
As corny as this sounds, invest in yourself. There are so many distractions these days; it’s so easy to get lost. You need to stay true to your core values. If you stay true to yourself, you will find what you’re passionate about. Also, meet people. Try new things. Be brave. One mistake won’t determine your fate. Learn from it and move on. And focus. Sustainability is very broad. Hone in on a subject that you know, which enables you to have real impact.
The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Cynthia Wijaya was one of the young sustainability leaders selected for the Eco-Business Sustainability Leadership Youth A-List 2025. Read our stories with the other winners here.