Thread: Southeast Asia's plastic tidal wave: Imported trash swamps region

BANGKOK/PANDEGLANG, Indonesia -- When Otin was a child, the beach in front of her home in Labuan, western Java, was so clean it would sparkle in the sunshine. "We used to be able to see the white sand," she reminisced.


Now a 42-year-old housewife married to a local fisherman, Otin spoke to Nikkei Asia atop a mound of muddy plastic waste, less than 100 meters from her front door. The paradisical sands she once played on as a child were nowhere to be found, replaced by piles upon piles of colorful washed-up plastic. "Every time the tide is high, there will be tons of trash, washing up all the way to my front yard," she said.


Most of the plastic items -- which range from shopping bags to food wrappers to toys -- are too weatherbeaten to identify, leaving residents unsure of where the waste is coming from. "The local authorities often warn us not to dump any trash on the beach," Otin said. "It feels like they're putting the blame on us." Otin added that she has never littered the beach, and all of the area's residents pay to have their rubbish collected weekly and processed at a landfill.


Otin blames a nearby market, located on the opposite side of the gulf-shaped coastline, for some of the garbage. But the sheer volume of plastic arriving on the shores of Labuan daily suggests the problem is more far-reaching. In the past few decades, Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia have become dumping grounds for plastic waste from across the globe via "waste trafficking," a trade that stubbornly persists despite attempts to ban it.

Although home to less than 9% of the world's population, ASEAN countries received 17% of the world's plastic waste imports from 2017 to 2021, according to United Nations data. From 2016 to 2018 alone, the region saw plastic waste imports grow by 171%, to 2.26 million tonnes, Greenpeace reported in a 2019 policy brief.


These often illicitly imported plastics have added to a burgeoning problem of domestic plastic use, making Southeast Asia the world's largest contributor to oceanic plastic waste, largely due to the region's river systems, long archipelagic coastlines, and weak environmental regulations and management.

Six of the world's top 10 biggest contributors to oceanic plastic pollution were in Southeast Asia in 2021, according to a widely cited study by Lourens J.J. Meijer, at the time head of data and monitoring at The Ocean Cleanup in Rotterdam, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand were responsible for more than half the global total with the Philippines alone generating a third, 356,371 metric tonnes, annually. Asia overall generates more than 80% of global oceanic plastic waste and is home to almost 60% of the world's population.


For decades, recycling used plastic has been promoted as both a business and a waste management solution in the developed world as part of an attempt to create a so-called circular economy, which relies on reusing materials to boost sustainability.

But critics are now increasingly pointing out that, unlike metal, plastic cannot be recycled indefinitely, and much of the plastic waste imported for recycling is instead simply dumped, burdening the countries that import it. As a result, millions of tonnes of unmanageable trash have ended up in developing countries unable to even manage their own waste.


"Think of the ships plying the waters just to go from rich countries to poor countries, burning greenhouse, bunker fuels ... just to dump the waste," said Jim Puckett, executive director of the Basel Action Network during a recent webinar. "A major driver [of the waste trade] is the co-option of words like recycling and circular economy. People think it's a green passport to just say recycling and away it can go, but recycling, like any industrial activity, is fraught with externalities."


For rich countries, exporting trash to Southeast Asia saves money and outsources the disposal problem. In an ironic twist, jurisdictions with the toughest environmental regulations are also some of the biggest exporters of waste to poorer countries. Although it is due to change in 2025 with an outright ban on exports to non-OECD countries, the European Union is the world's largest exporter of plastic waste, accounting for over 40% of the known trade, according to a report this month by Unwaste, a U.N. project aimed at combatting waste trafficking between the EU and Southeast Asia.


"It is a highly profitable, low-risk criminal activity that is going under the radar," Masood Karimipour, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) representative in Bangkok for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, recently told reporters in the Thai capital. U.N. officials said the violations typically involve fraud and misdeclaration of customs data in the importing country.

Interpol, the intergovernmental policing organization, includes plastic waste trafficking under an umbrella term, "pollution crime." In a 2022 report, it identified a "nexus" with organized crime. "This involvement, its nature and implications need to be better understood by the international law enforcement community in order to develop targeted law enforcement strategies able to disrupt the criminal networks behind illicit waste trade and other pollution crimes."


According to the European Commission, revenue generated from the regulated portion of the business in the EU region alone amounts to 9.5 billion euros per year. Much of this consists of fees paid by municipalities to private companies for recycling in developed countries.


But offloading waste that may be too expensive or complicated to recycle does not equate to responsible disposal. It simply transfers the problem to poorer countries that are invariably less well-equipped to deal with it -- and already have mounds of domestic waste to handle.

Data on the Philippines from 2019, for instance, shows a shocking disparity in the amount of "mismanaged" plastic waste -- that which is not recycled, incinerated, or stored in sealed landfills -- between Southeast Asia and the West. The amount of such waste per person in the Philippines was 37.23 kilograms, the highest in the world, compared to a negligible 0.81 kg per person in the U.S., according to Our World in Data. This was despite the Philippines producing only 0.07 kg of plastic waste per person daily, five times less than the U.S.


A 2021 Our World in Data analysis by data scientist Hannah Ritchie noted that seven of the 10 largest plastic-emitting rivers in the world were in the Philippines. The Pasig River alone contributed to 6.43% of the world's problem. The Klang River in Malaysia came in second at 1.33%.

With neither sufficient laws against waste trafficking nor government budgets to clean up the mess, the task of managing Southeast Asia's mountains of washed-up and dumped plastic usually falls to locals, like the residents of Labuan Beach.


Ading, a 40-year-old fisherman and Otin's next-door neighbor, said the waste is impacting his work. "Every time before I go out to fish, I have to clean the trash that has been jammed into my boat's propeller," he told Nikkei.


"We can't do anything about the trash that comes from the sea," he said, "it just keeps coming. So we have to keep cleaning it up."


The ripple effect


How much of Southeast Asia's plastic waste originates from outside of the region is not clear. What is clear is that ASEAN is already incapable of managing its own, and outsiders are exacerbating that problem with exports of often unrecyclable trash, including unmonitored plastic in cheap fashion discards and other forms of waste.

In terms of quantity, waste plastic accounted for less than 5% of all waste shipped globally from 2017 to 2022 and had a value of about $20 billion. But it does disproportionately higher environmental damage compared to other waste types, including metals and paper, according to numerous experts.


Lax regulation is said to be the main cause of the problem. "One of the reasons why [waste trafficking] is low risk is because in many countries the regulation of [it] does not fall under criminal laws but civil and administrative regulations, which means that even if you brazenly -- openly on a massive scale -- violate those rules, the penalties are minimal," Karimipour, the UNODC representative, said. "And, by the way, first you have to be caught before you can be given a minimal penalty."


The problem of waste being dumped in Southeast Asia is not new. In a 2010 PowerPoint presentation, Indonesia's directorate of customs and excise included nightmarish images of three shipping containers from Germany piled high with used condoms.

The region's plastic trash problem worsened dramatically after China banned imports of plastic and e-waste from the start of 2018 because much of it was unrecyclable and polluting. The Yangtze at the time was the world's most plastic-polluted river. Up to then, China had imported almost half the world's unwanted plastic and discarded electronic gear.


"The ripple effect from [China's] ban on importing waste was Southeast Asia being targeted by illicit traffickers of waste," Karimipour said. "One might even say this made Southeast Asia the epicenter of waste trafficking."


In landlocked Laos, with no proper indigenous recycling industry, imports of plastic waste rose over 25-fold from 2017 to 2019, according to U.N. Comtrade. The Tokyo-based Asian Network for Prevention of Illegal Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes says territories of origin for Laos have included Canada, Japan, Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, Vietnam, the U.S. and some EU countries.

Greenpeace in 2019 called for an immediate ban on all imports of plastic waste, even those meant for "recycling," and for all ASEAN countries to ratify the Basel Ban Amendment, which was signed in 1994 by OECD member states, the EU and Liechtenstein to prohibit the transboundary movement of hazardous waste.


Myanmar's plastic nightmare


International isolation offers no protection. Myanmar, a failed state locked in civil conflict for over three years that has shut out the world, is awash with imported plastic waste. Its majestic Irrawaddy was already among the world's most plastic-polluted rivers.


Visitors to Shwepyitha, a township northwest of Yangon, have found fields in which locals once gathered fresh watercress knee-dip in plastic refuse -- some of it according to rotting labels from countries as far off as Canada, France, Poland and the U.K.

Dumped waste plastic can be found all over Myanmar, but the problem is more acute around Yangon, the former capital that remains the country's commercial hub and largest city, with its outlying industrial zones.


Foreign waste offloaded across the Thai border is believed to travel up from Thailand's main deep-sea port at Laem Chabang and sent to recycling operations in, among other places, Shwepyitha's three industrial zones -- the eponymous Shwepyitha, Wartayar and Thardukan.


The business case for Southeast Asian importers of plastic waste, in theory, is that foreign plastic is generally of higher quality compared to what is locally available and thus more fit for recycling. However, a significant proportion of the waste is unrecyclable, even once, and ends up being dumped in leaky landfills or burned.


According to Yangon-based Myanmar Recycles, operator of the country's first commercial plastic recycling plant, Myanmar was already generating 3,750 tonnes of plastic waste daily before the military takeover, which was "primarily burned, littered in waterways and on land, or dumped in open landfills." In Shwepyitha, the dumps include a football pitch and other former green areas, clogging the township's drainage.

Myanmar does have environmental regulations, but their impact is negligible: The country signed the Basel Convention in 2015 and was expected to sign the Procedure on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Other Wastes once it is finalized. Myanmar's investment laws proscribe businesses that involve hazardous or poisonous wastes, and penalties for violating its Environmental Conservation Law run up to five years in prison and 2 million kyat ($949) in fines, or both. As in most places, penalties for plastic trafficking crimes are a rare minor inconvenience, a cost of doing business easily skirted by bribery.


"The waste sector is considered at high risk of corruption due to the complexity of the waste trade, low risk of detection and, in some jurisdictions, negligible penalties for waste offenses," the UNODC noted in its recently released "Unwaste" companion report, "Legal frameworks to address waste trafficking in the ASEAN region."


While critics say Thai customs are often lax about checking containers, usually waving them through if the paperwork appears to be in order, the caretaker cabinet of Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha did opt in early 2023 for a total ban on all plastic waste imports from the start of 2025. There are, however, 14 recycling plants in customs-free zones that need to be phased out, and exceptions may still be granted.

"Thailand's ban will have a major loophole -- it will not restrict the large flows of plastic waste being sent to the country for transit to Myanmar," Lighthouse Reports, a pioneer of collaborative journalism with a focus on migration, climate, conflict and corruption, said in January.


Thailand certainly has a formidable reputation for placing business ahead of environmental concerns. On Prayuth's watch, Thailand between 2017 and 2022 was the world's 10th largest exporter of plastic waste, and the biggest in ASEAN, according to U.N. Comtrade data.


Malaysia meanwhile was the fourth largest importer globally, with Vietnam in ninth position. Vietnam now hopes to implement an import ban similar to Thailand's by the end of 2025.


Regulation efforts


Following the China ban in 2018, the resulting flow of waste to Southeast Asia briefly sparked outrage that has largely dissipated. At the time, the Philippines returned 69 containers to Canada, and Malaysia rejected 450 tonnes of plastic waste from various countries. In July of that year, Cambodia discovered 70 shipping containers from the U.S. and 13 from Canada stuffed with waste plastic at its main port, Sihanoukville, on the South China Sea.


"Cambodia is not a dustbin where foreign countries can dispose of out-of-date e-waste, and the government also opposes any import of plastic waste and lubricants to be recycled in this country," an environment ministry spokesman said at the time.

Not long after, Indonesia sent eight containers of unrecyclable waste, including soiled diapers, from Surabaya back to Australia, and another 49 containers were returned to various countries, including France.


The EU is funding Unwaste, a three-year project partnering with the UNODC and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to combat waste trafficking between the EU and Southeast Asia. The main report was published in Bangkok on April 2.


"We support measures at multilateral, regional and bilateral level to combat environmental crime in the area of illegal exports, illicit trafficking, and also we commit to strengthen control of shipment of waste and to improve the sustainable management of waste," said Sara Rezoagli, the EU's deputy head of delegation to Thailand.

A regulation on waste shipment first proposed by the European Commission in late 2021 will finally be passed by the European parliament at the end of this month. It includes a ban on exporting waste to third countries and particularly banning shipments of hazardous waste to non-OECD countries, unless they specifically permit them.


The project's regional partners -- Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam - are four of ASEAN's 10 members but receive over 90% of the region's lawful plastic waste imports, according to open source data being used in what is to be a total of four reports.

Although the best data available has been used, it provides only the base level of the actual trade in waste plastic since the additional illicit trade is by definition immeasurable.


"It is really hard, based on this information, to draw a portrait of what actually happens on the waste trafficking scene across the world," Ioana Cotutiu, UNODC's regional coordinator for Unwaste, told Nikkei Asia. She noted that less than 50% of countries had contributed to the Basel Convention National Report, and European countries had been the most active.

"There are over 1,000 illegal cases reported, but very few resulted in legal consequences," Cotutiu said. "There is very little information on imprisonment, and the fines reported were relatively quite modest."


Said Karimipour, "To be fair, one of the recommendations is to invest more time and resources in helping countries develop reliable data with which we can have a more complete picture, and based on that evidence develop policies that can keep up with the scope of the problem."


For the residents of Labuan Beach in Indonesia, a solution cannot come soon enough. "I have already given up and surrendered to our situation," Otin said. "It's nice to see other beaches filled with tourists. All we get is trash."

Southeast Asia's plastic tidal wave: Imported trash swamps region -
Nikkei Asia

I'm just surprised they haven't worked out how to turn all this plastic into something useful.