Indonesian environmentalists accuse Australia of 'smuggling' plastic waste following China ban

Updated

Indonesian environmentalists are calling on Australia to tighten its regulation and enforcement of waste exports to foreign countries, claiming it is effectively "smuggling" huge amounts of plastic and waste paper supposedly sent for recycling.

Key points: Since a Chinese ban on foreign waste imports Australian exports to Indonesia have increased

Activists accuse Australian companies of slipping tons of plastic waste into paper bales

Department of Environment says the issue is the responsibility of Indonesian authorities

A waste import ban imposed by China in July 2017 has seen Australia instead export waste materials to nearer neighbours, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Millions of kilograms of Australia's waste has ended up in Indonesia's East Java province. During 2018, imports of waste materials to East Java from Australia reached 52,000 tonnes, a 250 per cent increase from 2014.

Local environmental activist group Ecoton claims that plastic among the waste paper bales imported from Australia is routinely burned or dumped into the Brantas River, where fish ingest it.

More than five million Indonesians are supplied with tap water from the river via state-owned companies, meaning its pollution has implications for human health.

Paper processing factories find the paper bales often also contain other contaminants and household waste, Prigi Arisandi the head of Ecoton told the ABC.

"There are violations of rules and ethics from other countries that import rubbish [to Indonesia]. We found human faeces, sanitary pads, diapers. Then there should have been compensation when Australia is deliberately using Indonesia as [their] recycling bin," he said.

"There should have been an agreement about it and not smuggling like we found."

Australia is among five countries that export used paper to factories in East Java, alongside the United States, Italy, England and South Korea.

"It's not fair to say that we're just taking our waste and dumping it," said Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association (WMRR) in Australia.

"What we're doing is that we're trading commodities with countries that have manufacturing bases."

'Made in Australia'

Last week, environmentalists protested outside Australia's consulate in the East Java capital of Surabaya with banners reading "Indonesia is not [your] recycling bin".

They called their protest "Take Your Shit Back From Indonesia", while demanding that the Australian Government introduce stricter regulations on waste exports.

"Actually, according to the rules in Indonesia, plastic waste should not exceed 2 per cent of the weight of used paper imported," Mr Arisandi said.

"But in fact, up to November 2018 almost 30 per cent of the paper waste we bought contained plastic waste."

Ecoton claims it found plastic waste, including food wrappers, plastic bottles, nappies and other non-recyclable plastics, among the waste paper, some of which was labelled "Made in Australia".

"I'd be very disappointed and I find it hard to believe that bales of that level of contamination are being produced from Australia," Ms Sloan of WMRR said.

A spokesperson for the Australian Department of the Environment and Energy told the ABC that checking whether the paper bales contained plastic or other household waste was the responsibility of Indonesian authorities and businesses.

"Standards for imports of recycled materials are the responsibility of the receiving country, including for levels of contamination," the statement said.

"If no such standards exist, then these are matters for commercial negotiations between the exporting and importing companies involved in the movement."

Indonesia's Ministry of Environment and Forestry as well companies that imported waste were contacted by the ABC for comment but had not responded at the time of writing.

Several of the companies that exported paper waste to East Java last year did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment.

Elsa Dominish, a senior research consultant at the University of Technology Sydney's Institute for Sustainable Futures, said that while "technically it is the responsibility for the country importing to inspect imports and check for contamination … Australian recyclers have a responsibility to make sure they what they are exporting is high quality and uncontaminated, particularly when exporting to countries which may not have the capacity to safely process it."

"We don't want to see Australia's recycling lead to environmental pollution and health impacts for our South-East Asian neighbours," she added.

Most recycling waste exported

Government data from 2016-17 showed that about 70 per cent of recyclable plastic and 43 per cent of recyclable paper and cardboard was exported for processing overseas.

"Recyclers have been doing a lot of work to meet the tighter restrictions, reduce contamination and create a higher quality feed," Ms Dominish said.

The Australian Council of Recycling — an industry peak body — recently released a statement claiming that the industry was "currently making some of the most advanced recycling investments in the world in response to the impacts of restrictions across Asia, including high-tech infrastructure to improve sorting".

"There's a huge role for government," said Ms Sloan. "We actually saw Bill Shorten when the ALP policy came out [and he] said they'll be looking at Government as the largest procurer of goods, to actually buy [recycled products].

"We need them to set the policy settings and show some leadership in this space and purchase Australian recycled content.

"In the long term the Australian [recycling] industry needs to improve contamination rates, either through better source separation or better technologies at the sorting facility," Ms Dominish added.

"[This] would avoid local environmental impacts, such as the burning and dumping that has been happening in countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam."

A version of this article was also published in Bahasa Indonesia.

Topics: environment, recycling-and-waste-management, environmental-impact, environmental-management, environmental-health, trade, indonesia, asia, australia

First posted