Indonesia says it has shipped back tonnes of Australia waste

Eight containers of trash have reportedly left Indonesia and are on their way back to Australia.

An Indonesian official holds trash as he inspects containers loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials from Australia.

An Indonesian official holds trash as he inspects containers loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials from Australia. Source: EPA

Indonesia has shipped tonnes of Australian garbage out of the country as Southeast Asian nations push back against serving as dumping grounds for foreign trash.

Eight containers of trash - weighing some 210 tonnes - left Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya on Monday aboard a cargo ship bound for Singapore, the local customs agency said on Tuesday.

The move comes less than a week after Australia pledged to stop exporting recyclable waste amid global concerns about plastic polluting the oceans and increasing pushback from Asian nations against accepting trash.
Plastic trash collected by scavengers at a garbage dump site area in Lhokseumawe, Aceh province, Indonesia.
Plastic trash collected by scavengers at a garbage dump site area in Lhokseumawe, Aceh province, Indonesia. Source: SIPA USA
Last month, Indonesia said it would return the Australian rubbish after authorities found hazardous material and household trash, including used diapers and electronic waste, in containers meant to only hold waste paper.

"Six containers contaminated with [hazardous] waste and two containers mixed with household rubbish" left Indonesia on Monday, Alvina Christine Zebua, a spokeswoman for the East Java customs agency, said. 

She could not confirm when the containers might arrive back in Australia.

Last month Indonesia returned seven shipping containers of illegally imported waste to France and Hong Kong that were seized in Batam Island near Singapore.

Those containers were loaded with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in violation of import rules.

Batam authorities were also preparing to return another 42 containers of waste, including shipments from the United States, Australia and Germany.

China used to receive the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world but closed its doors to foreign refuse last year in an effort to clean up its environment. 

Huge quantities of waste have since been redirected to Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia and to a lesser degree the Philippines.
Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become a growing international crisis. 

A particular environmental concern are microplastics - tiny pieces of degraded waste that absorb harmful chemicals and accumulate inside fish, birds and other animals.


Share
2 min read

Published

Source: AFP, SBS


Share this with family and friends


Get SBS News daily and direct to your Inbox

Sign up now for the latest news from Australia and around the world direct to your inbox.

By subscribing, you agree to SBS’s terms of service and privacy policy including receiving email updates from SBS.

Download our apps
SBS News
SBS Audio
SBS On Demand

Listen to our podcasts
An overview of the day's top stories from SBS News
Interviews and feature reports from SBS News
Your daily ten minute finance and business news wrap with SBS Finance Editor Ricardo Gonçalves.
A daily five minute news wrap for English learners and people with disability
Get the latest with our News podcasts on your favourite podcast apps.

Watch on SBS
SBS World News

SBS World News

Take a global view with Australia's most comprehensive world news service
Watch the latest news videos from Australia and across the world