From November 2025 to January 2026, a student team from TU Delft and Wageningen University supported Green Batik Pekalongan through the International Entrepreneurship and Development, or IED, Minor Programme. The team consisted of four students: Maureen van den Bergh, Isabel van Straaten, Emma Wiegers, and Emilie van der Weele. Their research built on the project’s mission to support Pekalongan’s batik industry in moving toward cleaner production. Their work focused on the question: what would encourage batik workshops in Pekalongan to adopt wastewater treatment systems? The students were guided and mentored by the Green Batik Pekalongan consortium during their stay in Pekalongan.
During the fieldwork, the students conducted interviews with local batik workshops, including several Green Batik Champions. The interviews explored practical, financial, and social factors that may influence whether workshops are willing and ready to adopt the treatment system. The research looked at questions such as how the system can be maintained independently, what barriers prevent workshops from investing, which payment models may be more affordable, and what role trust, social norms, and stakeholder support play in adoption.
The team’s research approach combined interviews, observation, and careful analysis of workshop needs. In the research plan, the students identified market and incentive analysis, system compatibility, and water reuse as key areas of focus. Their work also paid attention to cultural understanding, recognizing that collaboration with batik artisans must be built through respect, listening, and practical examples rather than outside assumptions.
Their findings showed that adoption is not only a technical matter. For many workshops, cost, space, maintenance, water quality, trust, and clear information all matter. The students also found that many batik owners want solutions that feel realistic for their daily production, not systems that look good on paper but are difficult to manage in practice.
The expected outputs from this activity include insights into workshop willingness and readiness to adopt the system, as well as recommendations to support wider uptake. These recommendations include ideas such as clearer payment plans, maintenance options, information sharing, promotion of the Green Batik label, and stronger coordination between Green Batik, workshops, government, and other stakeholders.
This student research complements the Green Batik Pekalongan project by strengthening its understanding of the behavioural and economic drivers behind scaling. In plain terms, it helps the project understand what batik workshops need before they can say yes. And that matters. Cleaner batik production will not grow through technology alone; it also needs trust, practical support, and solutions that make sense for the people using them every day.