Sea of NZ plastic offshore

Our waste could be burnt and in rivers in Indonesia

Kiwis might think by recycling they are doing a good thing for the environment — but a new study suggests New Zealand’s plastic waste could be “poisoning” Indonesian villages.

Indonesia has become New Zealand’s top dumping ground for plastic recycling, with exports there doubling between 2017 and 2018, from just under 6000 tonnes to over 12,000.

The jump came after China — previously the top recipient — imposed a ban on waste imports to the mainland at the start of 2017.

Overall plastic waste imports to Indonesia have doubled since then, with the majority coming from Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand.

While Kiwis might believe they are helping the environment by sorting their plastic, due to the sheer amounts and contamination — dirty plastic or plastic mixed with paper — much of it could not be recycled properly.

Prigi Arisandi, of local environmental organisation Ecoton, said a lot of it ended up being stockpiled or used as fuel in tofu boilers.

In his village of Bangun, plastic waste was ending up polluting the Brantas River, and was burned to reduce the volume of trash clogging streets and piling around houses.

In another village, Tropodo, plastic waste was used as a cheap fuel in tofu factories. Arisandi said plastic was about 70 per cent cheaper than alternatives like wood.

He had evidence of shipments arriving from New Zealand and had found New Zealand plastic waste in his village.

In September, Indonesia sent hundreds of containers of contaminated plastic back to where they came from, including five to

New Zealand.

Now, a study by environmental groups the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), Arnika, and Ecoton and the Nexus3 Foundation based in Indonesia has found dangerously high levels of toxins entering the food chain near those international junkyards.

Researchers collected freerange chicken eggs — the best indicators of toxins entering the food chain — at sites in the villages of Bangun and Tropodo to test for organic pollutants.

Near a tofu factory, tests found eating one egg would exceed the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) tolerable daily intake for chlorinated dioxins 70 times over.

Researchers said this was the second-highest level of dioxins in eggs ever measured in Asia — behind only an area of Vietnam contaminated by Agent Orange.

Dioxin exposure was linked to a variety of serious illnesses including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and endometriosis.

“These stark findings illustrate the dangers of plastics for human health and should move policymakers to ban plastic waste combustion, address environmental contamination, and rigorously control imports,” said Lee Bell, an adviser to the IPEN and a co-author of the report.

According to the IPEN, paper waste exported from New Zealand to East Java jumped from 6736 tonnes in 2014 to 18,943 tonnes by 2018 — a 281 per cent increase.

“Our communities that are being choked by plastic are being poisoned by it, too,” Arisandi said.

“Plastic waste dumping needs to end everywhere. Otherwise we will see the same polluting nations find ways to dump their plastic waste on poor communities in other countries. A spokeswoman for the Ministry for the Environment said there was a legitimate plastic waste import industry in Indonesia, as long as the materials were of a high standard.

The spokeswoman said none of the containers of contaminated waste returned from Indonesia had yet arrived in New Zealand.