But there is much to figure out. A ring of discarded plastic surrounds an entire rice field in Wirobiting.
Scattered across the medium-height stacks are plastic wrappers bearing the brand names of Australian supermarkets and products.
Australia exported more than 750,000 tonnes of paper and cardboard last financial year, almost a third of which went to Indonesia.
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.
This year they have staged regular protests outside Australian diplomatic offices in Indonesia.
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.
“But it’s not really clean. It can contain up to 10 percent of contaminants, mostly plastic waste.”
“It’s not clean”
Other plastic is burned in cement kilns in local factories as a cheap fuel.
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.
“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.
“The smoke is blowing to the east [and] “The situation for children is not good, so they should stay at home.”
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.
“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.
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.
“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
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.
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.”
“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.
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.