Indonesia refuses to take any more garbage from other countries

JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities have refused to take any more garbage-filled shipping containers in order to prevent the country from being a dumping ground for foreign trash. Indonesia has been tightening its surveillance of foreign trash in imports due to the unprecedented growth in the same.

About 250 containers were seized across the archipelago in recent months have already been sent back and authorities are probing more than 1,000 other containers for the same, an Indonesian customs official said. Authorities are expecting to send back 150 out of these back.

Out of the 250, 49 containers of waste seized on Batam Island near Singapore and have been shipped back to the United States, Germany, France, Hong Kong and Australia, said agency spokesman Deni Surjantoro. The shipments were found with a combination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials which violated import rules.

According to customs data, the remaining containers were shipped out of Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-biggest city, to the US, Britain and Germany. Huge quantities of waste have been redirected to Southeast Asian nations after China, which used to receive the bulk of scrap plastic from around the world, closed its doors to foreign refuse last year in a bid to clean up its environment.

According to the conservation organization WWF, around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, which 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.