From Jakarta, three internal flights transported the indefatigable Risa - director of the projects, and me, from one side of the Indonesian island to the other. Every destination, another part of the story - recycling organic market waste and turning it into compost.

How many times had I walked through markets in developing countries where the ground was littered with old vegetable leaves and rotting fruit? In many markets around Java, this is now the raw material for organic compost production, resold to local farmers at a price less than commercial compost. Win - win all round. I filmed happy farmers in paddy fields who told me that their crops yields had increased several fold since they started using the new organic crops, I filmed bright market traders who now sort out their waste into non-organic and organic baskets or bins they understood it, it made sense, every market I went to was spotless and felt sure It wasn’t just for me. The markets were cleaner and the rubbish wouldn’t just end up being trucked away to giant rubbish dumps. An hour’s drive from Yogyakarta we arrived at night at the city’s dumping ground - an entire hill of rubbish where the shadowy figures of people with kerosene torches stood in circles. As we approached closer we saw the “scavengers” hooking up plastic bags and collecting them in baskets. These residents of the dump make a meagre living by separating the plastic from the rotting rubbish and selling it by the kilo. Their scavenging only interrupted by having to shoo away the cows and bulls that are there to graze on anything they can chew on. I wondered what would happen to them if this would eventually mean smaller rubbish dumps with less waste to sort through. The stench, the flies and the shadow-like people will remained ingrained in my memory for quite some time…

I flew back to the modern city of Jakarta and was collected the next morning to go and film an interview at the Indonesian Biotechnology Research Institute, as I got into the car my driver told me “I hope you are not too nervous, there have been a couple of bombs in hotels near here”. I sent a text message my wife, who once relieved I was OK suggested I went down and filmed the aftermath, intrepid as I feel I am I thought better of it (you never know when the next one is going to go off). Waiting in the airport lounge that night I watched the news reports and saw the awful quality of the only footage the broadcasters had managed to get hold of, being repeated again and again and thought: “perhaps I should have rescheduled the interview…”