New Zealand is sending thousands of tonnes of our used plastic to Indonesia. We investigate what is happening there and what we can do at home to end this cycle of waste.
This story was made with funding from the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
When you step outside Resa Boenard’s home in Bantargebang, Indonesia, you come face-to-face with a towering mountain.
On top of it are four excavators at work, digging not through rock and soil but thousands of tonnes of plastic bottles, tins and food waste.
“We can’t close our eyes, the mount of rubbish is just in front of our door, in front of our home,” Resa says.
Every day, recycling and general waste are dumped onto this huge humanmade pile surrounding the thousands of people who call Bantargebang, located an hour outside Jakarta, home.
Disintegrating plastic forms a floor leading up to the biggest open landfill in Southeast Asia, where children play with kites, and sheep, goats and chickens pick at any leftover scraps they can find.
Thousands of kilometres away in New Zealand, it’s a good feeling, recycling. Knowing we’re not polluting the planet and lightening up our rubbish bags.
Until recently, many New Zealanders assumed we recycled plastics here.
However, the reality of where those separated items of refuse end up, as Resa knows, is less pleasant.
At the beginning of 2018, China tipped the recycling world into disarray with an outright ban on imports of most types of plastics, due to high pollution levels and environmental concerns.
Its Government called some of the imported waste “toxic”.
What happened next saw plastics with a 3-7 rating stockpiled, dumped at landfills or sent to other countries. One of those countries is Indonesia, which now receives the biggest chunk of New Zealand’s plastic exports.
Bantargebang takes rubbish from around Indonesia, with families making a living off the landfill by rifling through the waste to find items of value, such as plastic bottles and tins.
Children are occasionally seen helping their parents in the hot and humid conditions.
Like these children Resa grew up at the landfill. Being so close to the dumping ground of the world’s rubbish, Resa co-founded of Kingdom of Bantargebang, an educational community hub, where she teaches local children how to speak English, how to treat waste and to understand the environment.
“We give education to the kids to fight for their lives to make them believe there is a hope for the future,” she says.
It’s not easy to teach about the importance of the environment when the country’s waste sits on your doorstep, Resa says.
The children ask her why they should be the ones to change their habits, such as not buying plastic drinks with straws.
“The kids ask, ‘But why us?’ I say, ‘If not us, who?’
“We can’t close our eyes, the mountain of rubbish is just in front of our door, in front of our home.
“I really want the kids to understand, this is something people did outside, and this is what we get in Bantargebang.”
About 60% of waste coming to the tip is plastic, Resa says. From that, about 20% is taken by the workers who pick up plastic at the landfill. The rest is left, adding to the ever-growing rubbish hills.
The collectors make between $2-$10 a day. However, because of the rise of imported plastic from places like New Zealand, there is a concern their livelihood could be put at risk.
The community who base their livelihood off the landfill, picking through the waste for materials to sell to recycling companies, are not happy that places like New Zealand are increasing their plastic exports to Indonesia.
“The [recycling] company will be happier to get the waste from New Zealand, because [it’s] cleaner than the waste in Bantargebang,” says Resa.
It could also drive down the prices and demand for their collected plastic.
“It’s weird, it’s strange because we in Indonesia struggle to deal with our own waste and then we get more come in from other countries,” Resa says.
“Hopefully one day the country that want to keep their country clean, they do sort their own waste in their own country.”
Resa says many live unaware of the responsibility of their own discarded rubbish, leaving people like those living in Bantargebang to deal with the mess.
“People should understand as a human they should be responsible for their own waste, how not to harm the environment.”
The amount of waste going to the Bantargebang landfill is increasing, with an estimated 7000 tonnes dumped each day. In October last year, officials warned the site had capacity for three more years.
“What we’re trying to tell is how to produce less rubbish,” Resa said.
“We don’t need another Bantargebang in other places in Indonesia.
“You can bring your technology to Indonesia, not your waste. We need the right technology to solve the plastic issue, not to get more plastic in our country.”
In Bali, an older woman bends over a pile of rubbish searching for anything of value she can find. Scouring through the mess on a hot, muggy day she smiles as me and my guide approach her.
She tells us she collects about a bagful of plastic a day, either drink bottles or single-use cups that hold water. It’s hard work. She then sells that bag on for 10,000 Rupiah, about $1.
In Indonesia, people like this woman are known as ‘scavengers’. They scour the streets or dumps in search of high-quality plastic which is then sold on to recycling facilities who in turn sell it to companies for further processing or to be made into new products.
These plastics go to recycling plants of all sizes across the country. The plants also receive plastics from overseas.
David Christtian, in the city of Bundung, runs one such facility, a modest-sized recycling company.
Among the piles of bags under tin sheds tiny chips of purple, black, red and blue plastic cover the ground in large rectangles.
These tiny pieces of plastic along with other material recycled at David’s plant are either sold on to other companies to be made into products such as plastic file holders, bottles or used to create plastic bags at his other factory.
“You can make everything from plastic recycling. You can make shirts from bottles,” he says.
He points to empty oil containers, shampoo bottles and yogurt pottles that were destined to become plastic bags.
People throwing away waste is why David entered into the business of plastic.
“People don’t care about plastic here.”
“It’s never enough,” he says about the availability of plastic for recycling. “We need more plastic.”
But despite the hunger for more plastic to feed to the growth of his business, David doesn’t think other countries such as New Zealand sending plastic to Indonesia for recycling is the answer. Why? Because of Indonesia’s environmental issues.
“The difference from Indonesia and New Zealand is we can get clean trash from New Zealand,” says David.
A lot of the plastic from Indonesia is contaminated, he says. “It’s just thrown away on the road, there’s sand, it’s contaminated.”
There is currently no shortage of plastic arriving from overseas, including from New Zealand. There has been a huge increase in exports of plastic to Indonesia from our shores. Between the start of 2018 and the end of February this year, we sent 13,829 tonnes of plastic with a value of more than $4 million to Indonesia.
In 2016, New Zealand sent $8.2 million worth of plastic to China, compared to just $877,000 worth in 14 months since January 1, 2018.
After China closed its doors, numerous companies shut, essentially overnight, and moved their plants and equipment to countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
“That’s not a bad thing, that’s just business people trying to run a business,” says Marty Hoffart, chair of the Zero Waste Network, a New Zealand organisation working towards eradicating waste.
He says Southeast Asian such as Indonesia, have the infrastructure to make use of plastic from around the world and it’s cheaper to make resources out of recyclable material, rather than from virgin plastic.
“We’re not adding to people in those countries throwing their rubbish into the ditch, and we’re not adding to the pollution that gets swept up in storms, runs down rivers and ends up in the ocean.”
We may not be adding to the pollution, but Hoffart says the Government should be urgently creating conditions to have more onshore recycling in New Zealand.
“The timeframe is 10 years ago. The timeframe is right now. We’re the 10th worst country in the world for urban waste disposal, how bad is that?”
What is New Zealand’s doing with its low value plastics graded 3-7?
Some New Zealand councils have stopped collecting these plastics altogether, while others continued to collect and stockpile them. And there are some recycling plants which are, because of the ongoing contract they have with a council, continuing to sell overseas, even if it’s at low cost.
“We need to look at a better way to handle all of our recycling and that really is onshore. But if some have to be exported offshore, it’s not a bad thing,” says Hoffart.
However, others say it’s not just the Indonesian plastic collecting industry that could be stung during the import boom.
Lawyer Tiza Mafira is the director of Diet Kantong Plastik, an international organisation that consults with the Indonesian Government and businesses, advocating for responsible use of plastic.
Asked if sending our plastic to places like Indonesia, which have more recycling capabilities than New Zealand, is the answer, her answer is unequivocal: “Absolutely not.”
She says importing plastic material for recycling has opened the door for huge problems in Southeast Asia. “What we’re receiving is not waste that can be recycled. What we’re receiving is waste residue.”
Mafira says the legislation in Indonesia is intended to allow scraps from factories into the country, material that did not make the cut, not post-consumer waste.
But that’s not the reality of what happens.
In various port cities around Indonesia some of the low-quality, less-valuable imported material ends up in make-shift landfills, Mafira says.
Tonnes of plastic and waste were found in one such dump in the port-city of Surabaya on the island of Java. Brands that are not sold in Indonesia could be identified in the stacks of rubbish.
“There’s this narrative in developing countries that if you want to manage your waste properly, look at developed countries. What is less known is, actually, developed countries aren’t doing that much better, they’re just sending their waste to us,” says Mafira.
Tracking exactly where New Zealand products ended up is also a sticking point.
“When we export to overseas countries we lose that accountability,” Greenpeace plastics campaigner Emily Hunter says. “We know there are illegal markets that do spring up, that are really just pushing our problems further and further into land, air and the ocean.”
Mafira says it is a “no brainer” that certain types of plastics, those with low value and are hard to recycle, should be phased out altogether.
When Plastik Diet set in motion moves to decrease the use of single use plastic bags in Indonesia, they found out the hard way that government, business and consumers must be onboard simultaneously to achieve that goal.
Market forces alone are not enough, governments must be prepared to intervene, and consumers have to be educated.
What is Indonesia actually doing about its problems in this area?
Greenpeace Indonesia is also against overseas countries sending their plastic to their country, describing it as overlapping their efforts to reduce their plastic pollution issues.
“This country has a very serious problem about the plastic. It’s very sad for us, for Indonesian people that know that Indonesia has this big, serious problems about plastic pollutants,” says Greenpeace Indonesia urban campaigner Muharram Atha Rasyadi.
Greenpeace Indonesia has worked with their government, with one initiative combining Islam with environmentalism, urging people to go plastic-free during Ramadan.
The Government in Jakarta is committed to a 20% reduction in waste this year, and 70% by 2025. Waste to Energy schemes are being explored and $1 billion has been pledged to help clean up ocean waste.
The island of Bali has implemented a partial ban on plastic bags and straws, and the Jakarta Provincial Government is also exploring a ban on bags.
In Surabaya, a city of about three million people, a bottle deposit scheme lets passengers pay with plastic, the scheme collecting 12 tonnes of plastic for recycling in the first three months.
Some private businesses are also jumping onboard, with one health facility swapping plastics for health insurance, and another taking plastic as payment for doctor visits.
In Bali’s Green School, local children can exchange their recyclables for English lessons.
“The issue with plastic is that we’re demanding [progress] to be faster than it normally would because of how disastrous the situation is. We really need change fast, not later,” Mafira says.
Despite the initiatives, current trajectories suggest that seems unlikely.
“The reality is, with industry, the projections for growth are quite staggering for new virgin plastic,” says Hunter. “Currently the projection by the plastic industry is that they’re going to double plastic production in the next 20 years and quadruple it by 2050.”
That’s why Greenpeace New Zealand is asking for government-led solutions including levies, fees and bottle deposit schemes.
In a recent survey carried out by Colmar Brunton, called Better Futures, it found the single-issue New Zealanders care most deeply about is plastic waste. The proportion of respondents worried about the build-up of plastic in the environment is now 72% - more than the number concerned about the cost of living, the protection of New Zealand children and suicide rates.
It found Kiwis were increasingly committed to altering to sustainable lifestyles, with 42% ‘highly committed’ in 2018, up from 30% in 2017 and 25% in 2016. The survey pointed to an “obvious need and opportunity” for Government and business to provide and push for sustainable choices for New Zealanders.
Social and environmental responsibility of businesses was also found to be of great importance to consumers, with 90% of respondents saying they would stop buying products or using services from irresponsible or unethical companies.
However, despite these good consumer intentions, only 1% of those buying lunch from a takeaway consistently use reusable containers.
New Zealand’s crackdown on plastic bags saw consumers take the front foot on plastic bags, presenting a petition to Parliament which ultimately contributed to businesses and government cracking down.
Ahead of an outright ban, set to come into force mid-2019, there has already been a noticeable shift which can be seen at any supermarket, and consumers who always or mostly use reusable bags jumped from just 30% in 2017 to 84% in 2018, according to the Colmar Brunton survey.
Consumers are ready for change, but recycling reliance on countries like Indonesia looks like it will remain.
Paul Evans, who was at the time chief executive of WasteMINZ, the representative body for the waste industry in New Zealand, expects Indonesia to remain an important destination for our plastic waste. And says we are “naïve” if we don’t accept we have a role in plastic pollution issues in Indonesia.
“The idea that we are going to be able to deal with everything within New Zealand, I don’t think that is a reality. We have a much smaller manufacturing industry than we used to, so that demand for raw materials is lower.”
He thinks New Zealand needs to grasp the opportunity that high-grade plastics 1 and 2 hold, reprocess those onshore alongside policy initiatives to drive recycling demand and a decrease in the use of zero-value plastics 3-7. And for a timeframe, this needed to happen yesterday.
“We need to look at them and be saying, should we be using all of those materials in the first place?”
So, what should New Zealand do?
Right now, New Zealand has the capability to recycle all of plastics 1, and probably most of 2, agrees Hoffart from the Zero Waste Network.
He recommends legislation of a minimum of 25 to 30% recycled content in packaging as “that would create a demand on the back end for all of this plastic that currently doesn’t have a value”.
And he notes that another alternative, compostable plastic, comes with its own cost. “You still have to make it every time, to remake it you still need factories and virgin material and production.”
Plastics NZ CEO Designate Rachel Barker believes that all plastics should be reused and recycled, but when it can’t be, the energy from plastics can be recovered to power homes, vehicles and businesses.
“To date the NZ government has been unwilling to discuss this option for New Zealand waste.
“Non-reusable, non-recyclable waste of all types is converted into energy, thereby reducing the need for landfilling which is the least desirable option due to high environmental impacts.”
Barker says Plastics NZ were working with industry and the Government to encourage sorting of plastic 5, which includes yogurt, dip, margarine, ice-cream and takeaway containers.
“There is local demand for recycled polypropylene and this is the next largest percentage by polymer type that goes into kerbside collection.”
Educator Kate Meads, of Waste Free with Kate, echoes the views of Tiza Mafira of Diet Kantong Plastik.
“I work for 47 councils around New Zealand and one of the things I have learnt is there is very little a council can do to reduce the waste because ultimately, they are not the producer,” Meads says.
“There needs to be a combined effort from government, industry and consumer in my opinion.”
She views unnecessary packaging as one of the key problems to be tackled and is supported in that view by James Griffin, of the Sustainable Business Network, who says the best method to reduce the amount of single use plastic is to eliminate problematic packaging in the first place.
He says businesses were at the forefront of the banning of plastic bags but have reservations about imposing other changes such as minimum recycled content in plastic products. Noting New Zealand’s size, he says any legislation would need to be in line with other larger markets.
“Firstly, the New Zealand based supply of recycled material is currently limited due to lack of onshore processing facilities. The New Zealand supply side would need to be developed, which needs to happen anyway of course, so we can deal with our waste to a greater extent.”
At Flight Plastic in Lower Hutt they’re doing this. They take almost two-thirds of the recycling of New Zealand’s used PET plastic 1 and turn it back into food grade packaging for items like berries, bakery, meat and biscuits.
The plastics are sourced nationwide, which “keeps it out of the landfill and waste stream,” says chief executive Keith Smith.
And director Derek Lander adds: “It’s actually a very, very effective medium, using NZ’s recycled material gives us that opportunity without increasing the amount of plastic coming into the country.
“One of the tasks we all have in New Zealand is to increase the recycling rate, currently the rate is somewhat less than 30%.”
National’s Environment spokesperson Scott Simpson agrees that a “circular economy,” through schemes like bottle returns, is the answer. His party is proposing a system where 90% of drinks containers are not sent to landfill.
“A circular economy is restorative by design and is underpinned by the use of renewable energy. It’s a sustainable and viable alternative to the dominant linear model we have today,” he says.
What does the Government think about some of those suggestions?
Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage says exporting plastic waste to places like Indonesia and Malaysia is not the answer.
“We’ve got to design products that design waste out of the system which has much less packaging, we’ve got to reprocess materials here, recover materials and reuse them.”
She said governments in places like Southeast Asia are responsible for their environment but hopes that New Zealand councils sending their waste overseas know where it’s going, and how it’s being processed.
Asked about other options, on minimum percentages of recycled material in every new plastic product she says, “not one of the top priorities at the moment”, on container deposit schemes, where say 10c is added to the price of a bottle and returned when it is given back, the Government is “going to look at all of the issues”.
Barker from Plastic NZ agreed with this, saying “legislation would be complicated and difficult to police”, but Government and councils should consider buying New Zealand made and requesting recycled content where practical.
Sage’s focus may be elsewhere. “We need to increase the types of plastics that we reprocess in New Zealand. We’re doing it for PET, we need to do it for polypropylene plastic – the plastic that is in hummus containers, yogurt containers.”
China’s ban on waste plastics is “a great challenge and it is an opportunity” and the minister says the priority is to expand the landfill levy, which has sat at $10 a tonne since 2008.
“That will lead to revenue that we can recycle, and to help councils reduce their waste and to help progressive business set up more reprocessing facilities on shore.”
In conclusion? “I think New Zealand needs to do much better.”
Resa and the people living near the landfill mountain in Bantargebang will no doubt hope that we – and other, larger countries – do just that. But for now, it looks like we’ll keep exporting thousands of tonnes of plastic waste to her country.
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