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Jakarta Post

Imported waste found in Bekasi village

Sea of trash: A scavenger collects trash at a dumpsite in Burangkeng village in Bekasi regency, West Java, on Thursday

The Jakarta Post
Jakarta
Tue, August 6, 2019

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Imported waste found in Bekasi village

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ea of trash: A scavenger collects trash at a dumpsite in Burangkeng village in Bekasi regency, West Java, on Thursday. Some 500 meters from the dumpsite locals have discovered a pile of what they suspect is imported waste.(JP/Budi Sutrisno)

Dadang, 35, a scavenger living in Burangkeng village in Setu distict, Bekasi regency in West Java was puzzled when he found unusual trash during his regular search in the village, located some 41 kilometers away from the capital city Jakarta.

The 1.5-meter high mound of trash was found to contain foreign products and some plastic bank cards. The trash was dumped in a vacant lot some 500 m from the official dumpsite site in the village.

Dadang questioned how the foreign trash ended up in his neighborhood, asking why the authorities would allow such imported waste from overseas to end up in the country.

“While many think the issue is the plastic waste mixed up in the imported trash, I actually question why this country should import trash at all,” he said on Thursday.

Madih, head of local neighborhood unit in the village said he was shocked to discover the trash right in front of his house after waking up one morning in May.

The 30-year-old said that the trash pile consisted of inorganic waste allegedly discarded by a paper production factory in neighboring West Cikarang district.

“We used to sell our collected cardboard and paper for the factory’s intermediate materials,” he said.

He blamed the factory, run by publicly listed paper packaging manufacturer PT Fajar Surya Wisesa, as it had been sending up to four or five trucks of trash per day to the dump site since 2017. However, it was only this year, when the delivery was reduced to two trucks per day, that residents noticed the foreign waste.

The company’s corporate secretary and finance manager Marco Hardy did not immediately respond to The Jakarta Post’s queries about the imported trash. The Post’s calls to the company’s office phone number to confirm the information gathered from the residents met with no response either.

Suspicions were aroused that the waste was imported because of the absence of labels on food packaging saying that the products were to be distributed in Indonesia or that they had been certified by the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM).

The waste included packaging from chocolate chips from New Zealand, organic spaghetti from Canada, instant rice and dog food from the United Kingdom, cat food from France and biscuits from Australia.

Some bank cards were also found including a debit card from New Zealand’s state-owned Kiwibank, a debit card from the United States’ MetaBank and a pension fund card from Australian provider AustralianSuper. All the details, such as names and numbers, were still visible.

Separately, the Burangkeng dumpsite manager Maulana said he had refused to accept the trash from the factory upon discovering the foreign waste.

“I do not know how it all started, but it has stopped now. We are not tolerating any disposal of foreign waste in this site,” he said.

When asked about how they handled their trash, residents in the village, including Dadang, acknowledged that they just left the trash in the field as they could not make any money from the foreign waste.

“The trash consists only of plastic packaging. It cannot be sold and may only be piled up or simply left there,” Dadang said.

Scavengers also expressed annoyance at the discovery of imported paper materials, which they said undercut their income from selling the paper and cardboard they collected.

“We collect similar materials from local waste, but they fetch low prices because the receiving factory says they are more smelly and wet,” he said.

Dadang said that initially, the residents could sell collected cardboard at a price of up to Rp 1,400 (9 US cents) per kilogram, but because of the competition with foreign waste, they could now only get Rp 1,000 per kg. Meanwhile, for paper they can only get Rp 300 per kg, down from Rp 500 per kg.

“I just want the people in charge to know that foreign trash is causing harm to both the environment and to powerless people like me,” he said when asked about what he hoped the government would do.

The incident is only the latest in the ongoing story of the country’s importation of foreign waste. Imported plastic, paper and even toxic waste have been found in several regions in Indonesia including Mojokerto in East Java and Batam in Riau Islands.

Activists have lambasted the government’s weakness in managing waste imports and called for a total ban to prevent an influx of waste into the country. (syk)

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