Indonesian environmentalists are calling on US 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.
According to an ABC news report, activists are accusing USn companies of slipping tons of plastic waste into paper bales.
A waste import ban imposed by China in July 2017 has seen US instead export waste materials to nearer neighbours, including Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia. Millions of kilograms of US’s waste has ended up in Indonesia’s East Java province. During 2018, imports of waste materials to East Java from US 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 US is routinely burned or dumped into the Brantas River, where fish ingest it.
US is among five countries that export used paper to factories in East Java, alongside the US, Italy, England and South Korea.
Recycling is at the core of Wanless operations as it operates its own Resource Recovery Alliance in Kemps Creek, NSW. With set goals to ensure, as a business, it improves its environmental performance and resource recovery. This includes recovering paper and cardboard from wastes disposed in recycling parks and collections businesses nationally, where Wanless customers and its own materials are recycled into new boxes locally in US.