Articles Steward Leadership

Forging lasting materials from Indonesia’s waste

Indonesia

Plana turns two overlooked waste streams into durable building materials, creating additional income for Indonesian farmers and waste collectors while reducing demand for natural wood.

Joshua Christopher Chandra

Co-Founder & Chief of Sustainability & Relations @ Plana (PT Peduli Alam Nusantara)

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Posted 25/09/2026

Challenge

A plastic item may only be used for minutes, yet it remains in the environment for generations. Rice husks face a different but equally wasteful fate: once separated from the grain, they are often burned because farmers have little use or market for them.

Meanwhile, growing demand for construction materials continues to place pressure on forests. These problems appear separate, but they share a missing link. Plastic waste and rice husks both have material value that is being lost, while the people collecting or producing them have limited ways to benefit.

Plana saw an opportunity to bring all three challenges into the same solution.

Solution

PlanaWood begins with an unlikely recipe: 60 per cent rice husk, 30 per cent recycled plastic and 10 per cent additives.

The mixture is transformed into a wood-like construction material for decking and other architectural uses. Each 3.1-metre decking unit contains approximately 4.8 kilograms of rice husk purchased from farmers and 2.4 kilograms of recycled plastic sourced through waste collectors.

The result resembles natural wood but is designed to withstand conditions that often shorten timber’s life, known as PlanaWood. The material is water-resistant, termite-proof and able to withstand up to 3,000 newtons of pressure. It can be produced in customised lengths, reducing offcuts during installation, and is recyclable again after use.

By purchasing materials that might otherwise be burned or discarded, Plana creates new demand at the beginning of the supply chain. It then sells the finished product to homeowners, architects, contractors and property developers.

This circular model is already generating revenue. Over a recent 24-month period, Plana earned more than IDR 11.1 billion, approximately US$720,000, from over 500 paying customers.

Impact

Since January 2024, Plana has produced more than 30,000 decking units, transforming 165,137 kilograms of plastic waste and 330,274 kilograms of rice husk into construction materials.

For farming communities, waste from the harvest has become an additional source of income. Between 2024 and the fourth quarter of 2025, Plana paid farmers more than IDR 330 million for rice husks. Waste collectors received more than IDR 2.64 billion for recycled plastic.

Those payments give both groups a direct stake in the circular economy. Farmers have an alternative to burning unwanted husks, alleviating its environmental impacts, while collectors gain a steady buyer for the plastic they recover.

Plana estimates that its operations have reduced carbon emissions by approximately 24.8 million kilograms. Its products also reduce reliance on natural wood, keeping discarded materials in use for years rather than allowing them to accumulate in landfills or be destroyed through open burning.

The model has also found its way into prominent spaces. In 2025, 500 square metres of PlanaWood were installed at the Indonesia Pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, placing a material made from local waste on an international stage.

Future outlook

By 2027, Plana aims to serve more than 1,500 customers across Indonesia and Southeast Asia. It plans to adapt PlanaWood into façade cladding, ceilings, wall panels and modular architectural boards, giving its waste-based material more ways to replace conventional products.

Over the following three to five years, the company intends to produce at least 137,614 additional units, upcycling around 330 tonnes of plastic and 661 tonnes of rice husk.

Plana’s larger goal is to prove that waste does not have to remain a costly problem. With the right design and market, it can become a durable product, a source of income and a building block for something new.

Plana (PT Peduli Alam Nusantara) started with an uncomfortable question: why cut down a tree to build something when so much waste is already lying around? Producing in Indonesia since 2020, Plana developed PlanaWood, a building material made by combining rice husk (otherwise often burned by farmers), with recycled plastic waste, without using wood or woodchips. Designed to replace hardwood across decks, ceilings, walls, floors, stairs and furniture, PlanaWood keeps waste in use for decades and can be returned to the factory at the end of its life to be remade into new deckings. From its plant in Jatake, Tangerang, Plana sources rice husk from more than a hundred smallholder farmers and recycled plastic through waste collectors. Today, PlanaWood is installed in malls, hotels and buildings across Indonesia, and was showcased at the Indonesia Pavilion at World Expo 2025 in Osaka.

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Equality Climate Change Governance Sustainability Steward Leadership

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