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Sungai Design: Turning River Trash to Designer Treasure

Did you know over 7 million pounds of plastic have been pulled out of Indonesia’s rivers by Sungai Watch? Problem was: no one wanted the waste. Enter Sungai Design—the for-profit sibling of the cleanup nonprofit—that’s now turning plastic bags and trash into jaw-dropping home goods.

The backstory

Sam Bencheghib and his siblings grew up in Bali, spending weekends cleaning beaches. They went from kayaking polluted rivers in boats made of bottles to building 300+ daily river barriers that trap plastic before it hits the ocean. Then came the new challenge: mountains of unusable waste piling up in warehouses.

The glow-up

Instead of sending it to landfills, they launched Sungai Design in 2024. First hit? The Ombak Chair, made from 2,000 plastic bags. A viral video racked up nearly 200M views, 600K website visits, and 10K shopping carts filled. (They could only make four chairs a week at first—oops.)

Now, the Ombak Chair ships flat-pack, IKEA-style, with a 30% lower price tag. Sungai Design has also rolled out trays, coasters, and tissue boxes—yes, all made from river junk.

Why it matters

• Closing the loop: They don’t just collect trash—they sort, wash, recycle, design, and sell the products themselves. Full transparency.
• Impact at scale: Every piece of trash is scanned and logged, building a database of 2.5M+ items to identify the world’s worst polluters.
• Bigger vision: They’re experimenting with glass ceramics, fabric shredding, even phone cases. Call it modern-day mining: turning yesterday’s waste into tomorrow’s raw material.

What’s next

Sungai Design is raising $5M to expand production. Not to scale fast, Silicon Valley-style—but to build lasting infrastructure. Their message: cleanup alone won’t save us. Solutions come from turning problems into products and waste into wonder.

The takeaway

From Bali rivers to your living room, Sungai Design proves trash can be treasure—and design can fuel global change. One chair, one coaster, one plastic bag at a time.

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