Sumina spends her days cleaning up Australian plastic waste in her Indonesian village

At the age of 70, Sumina works long days under difficult conditions.
In her village of Wirobiting, Indonesia, she sorts waste imported from abroad for recycling.
“I’m happy because if there was no work, I wouldn’t make any money. I have to pay to rent a house and help my community,” she tells SBS News.

But there is much to figure out. A ring of discarded plastic surrounds an entire rice field in Wirobiting.

According to local environmental activists, the plastic ends up in shipments of paper and cardboard in Indonesia.
The shipments are purchased by local paper mills and imported from abroad, after which the unwanted plastic is discarded.

Scattered across the medium-height stacks are plastic wrappers bearing the brand names of Australian supermarkets and products.

East Java has become a center for global paper and cardboard recycling since 1945 on the import of low-grade, contaminated waste from developed countries in 2018.

Australia exported more than 750,000 tonnes of paper and cardboard last financial year, almost a third of which went to Indonesia.

A discarded package of Australian brand laundry pods lies on a pile of waste paper and plastic.

Indonesia imports approximately 3 million tons of waste paper annually, including from Australia. Source: SBS News / Aaron Fernandes

The intention is to have a with waste paper, explains Kyle O’Farrell, director of Melbourne-based environmental consultancy Blue Environment.

“There is so much cardboard and plastic coming into Australia,” says O’Farrell.

“To get circular material flows going, we need to bring those materials back to the global markets where they came from. [and] to where the manufacturers are who need these materials, [so that we] ensure they return to Australia as products and packaging with recycled content.”
However, environmental activists in East Java claim the industry is damaging the environment and want the trade to stop altogether.

This year they have staged regular protests outside Australian diplomatic offices in Indonesia.

Daru Setyorini, an Indonesian woman who runs the Ecoton Foundation, stands in front of piles of plastic waste.

Daru Setyorini, who heads the Indonesia-based Ecoton Foundation, is calling for a ban on waste exports to Indonesia. Source: SBS News / Aaron Fernandes

Among those calling for a halt to the export is Daru Setyorini, the executive director of the Indonesia-based Ecoton Foundation, who says the waste paper is contaminated.

“The paper mills import waste paper from many countries, from developed countries such as the US, Australia and Europe. Indonesia imports about three million tons of waste paper annually,” says Setyorini.

“But it’s not really clean. It can contain up to 10 percent of contaminants, mostly plastic waste.”

“It’s not clean”

Sumina is one of thousands of informal workers who have turned their backs on traditional agriculture and now make a living by sorting waste.
Once the paper mills have returned the plastic, she looks for hard pieces that she can sell to companies that recycle plastic.

Other plastic is burned in cement kilns in local factories as a cheap fuel.

A woman sorts a large pile of plastic and paper waste

Sumina sorts a mountain of plastic waste in her village. Source: SBS News / Aaron Fernandes

Her work exposes her to dangerous toxins on a daily basis.

“The risks can range from waste leakage to plastic washing away, resulting in microplastics entering waterways,” explains Dr Monique Retamal from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology Sydney.

“And then you have the residue that ultimately has no value and is burned in an open, uncontrolled manner, and that produces a lot of toxic fumes.

All of these things can be hazardous to both the local environment and the health of workers and communities.

Although the waste industry provides significant income to local people in East Java, there is growing concern about its health impact.
“Children here can’t go outside in the morning because [of] “The pollution from the village next door,” a local man tells SBS News.

“The smoke is blowing to the east [and] “The situation for children is not good, so they should stay at home.”

Three boys sitting on a pile of shredded waste pose for a photo

Children in Wirobiting are exposed to potentially dangerous toxins from imported waste. Source: SBS News / Aaron Fernandes

Environmental tests by Ecoton have shown that dioxins are present in the air from burning plastic and that pollutants are present in local rivers from wastewater.

According to the organization, informally processed plastic pollutes local villages.

“That’s why we want all developed [countries to] have more capacity to [recycle]”, says Setyorini.

If they say it can be recycled, then they should recycle it in their own country, they should not send it [it] to other countries for recycling.

Indonesian environmentalists say the country has a major waste problem of its own and there is no point in importing waste from Australia.

At the heart of the household waste problem is a lack of sorting. Fewer than one in five households separate their waste, meaning that everything from food to plastic, metal and clothing is all dumped in increasingly over-capacity landfills.

“Each country must take responsibility for managing its own waste,” says Setyorini.

“Because in Indonesia we already have our own problem with waste. Actually, if the waste collector [wants] to collect waste, they can simply collect their own waste in their own village. There [is] “They can already collect quite a bit of waste.”

Calls to strengthen Australian recycling

Since July, stricter rules have been in place for Australian exports of waste paper and cardboard.

The Australian Waste Industry Association has rejected claims that contaminated shipments are being shipped overseas, but said it wants to see more recycling in Australia.

Piles of plastic waste in Indonesia

According to industry experts, the federal government’s planned framework for the circular economy should be in force by the end of this year. Source: SBS News / Aaron Fernandes

“We don’t send waste. We send raw materials that have been purchased and that go to remanufacturing facilities in Asia,” says Gayle Sloan, CEO of the Waste Management And Resource Recovery Association Of Australia.

“But I would also say to Australians: what we would really like is for you to buy products made from Australian recycled materials, so that we can build our own reuse base and not be reliant on reuse around the world to process the materials that we consume.”

To achieve this, the industry says the federal government must do more to encourage the reuse of recycled materials in Australia.

“The current Environment Minister has committed to having a circular economy framework in place by the end of the year,” Sloan said.

That’s great, but there is still so much to be done and it should have been done long ago.

The federal government is currently examining the effectiveness of export regulations and domestic recycling in a Senate investigation, the results of which will be announced later this year.

Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek told SBS News the federal government, working with states, territories and industry, is spending $1 billion on more than 130 projects that will almost double Australia’s recycling capacity.

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