Close Loopholes in Waste Imports

KOMPAS/BAHANA PATRIA GUPTA

A woman dries plastic waste on the road in front of her house on 8 July 2019 in Bangun village, Pungging district, Mojokerto regency, East Java. Most villagers make a living by sorting the waste imported by a paper factory from the United States, England, Australia and several Asian countries, and then selling the waste to collectors for recycling.

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — The government is making efforts to tighten regulations on non-toxic waste imports. It is clear that Indonesia must not be a dumping ground for waste from any country.

If recycling businesses must use recycling materials from abroad, they are urged to purchase clean and ready-to-process products to prevent the presence of toxic and hazardous materials in the imported waste.

Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) urban and energy campaign manager Dwi Sawung said the government should be urged to stop imports of recycling materials mixed with regular or toxic waste. “If importing is a must as the industry lacks materials, then the materials must be really clean and be ready for processing,” Dwi said in Jakarta on Wednesday (17/7/2019).

The Trade Ministry’s secretary-general, Karyanto Suprih, said import of recycled plastics as raw material was dilemmatic. When absorption of household waste for recycling is still low and much ends up in landfills or polluting the environment, Indonesia imports recycling materials from abroad.

Recycling businesses said that they had to import as local raw materials did not fulfill specifications, due to poor quality of waste sortation and processing. Middle ground would be to establish specific regulations.

Imports of recycling materials are regulated under Trade Ministerial Regulation No. 31/2016 on the import of non-toxic waste. The Trade Ministry, the Environment and Forestry Ministry, the Customs Directorate General and the Industry Ministry are revising the regulation.

The government is trying to remove ambiguous stipulations to prevent waste violating the regulation from entering the country. “This includes the wording ‘et cetera’ (mix paper and mix plastics). This must be studied to prevent any mix up in the future. We want the regulation to be specific in listing the materials that can be imported,” Karyanto said.

East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa said she hoped the revised regulation would be a new reference. She said current regulation included several “rubber” articles that could be exploited to allow plastic wastes coming in alongside paper waste. “

In the past two months, plastic waste and toxic materials have been found in five containers of imported used papers from the US and Australia at Tanjung Perak Port, Surabaya.

Pollutant

Among the sensitive issues in the revised Trade ministerial regulation is the allowed percentage of contaminants or impurities (pollutants) in the imported recycled materials.

The Industry Ministry’s director general of agro-industry, Abdul Rochim, said the limit for impurities, in line with an Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) regulation, would be 2 percent for prohibited materials. “This may not be applicable immediately. Perhaps, we can do it gradually from 5 percent annually, going down in phases until we reach two percent,” he said.

The stipulation of a maximum limit on impurities is needed to control the raw material content of imported recycled paper. “I think it’s impossible to get 100 percent paper. Some impurity is inevitable,” Abdul said.

The Industry Ministry’s downstream chemical industry director,Taufiek Bawazier, said that tolerance for impurities should be made stricter. “The old regulation is weak. Now, we want to make this tighter. Tolerance for impurities is 5 percent at most. Any more than that and the materials must be rejected. This must be done in the origin country, not here. We have an operational partnership [KSO] between Surveyor Indonesia and Sucofindo, under the Trade Ministry’s guidance,” he explained.

KOMPAS/BAHANA PATRIA GUPTA

An officer of the Tanjung Perak Customs Enforcement Team photographs a container of used paper imported from Australia on 9 July 2019 at the Surabaya Container Terminal in Surabaya, East Java. The team has recommended that eight containers containing 210 tons of imported waste be returned to their country of origin, as they were contaminated with household waste.

Taufik said that previous regulations were not explicit about maximum allowed impurities. Supervision is also manual, namely by visual observation to ensure that the waste is clean and does not smell. “People are exploiting this so we should just make it stricter. We should just follow the Basel Convention: homogenous, clean and tolerance nationwide is set at 5 percent,” he said.

Next is monitoring in loading country. “In the revised regulation, there are accredited exporters. Imported goods can be returned to exporters’ address in the loading countries,” Taufiek said.

Separately, ISRI vice president Adina Adler said that the US had a good waste collection, processing and recycling system. Economically, it does not make sense for US-based industries to export waste abroad with huge costs.

Adler said that recycled material trade was done through the free market, so the US government has no role in it, especially as the US has yet to ratify the Basel Convention. However, if there are violations, the US government can issue punishment in line with prevailing regulations. (ICH/JUD/SYA/CAS/ADH)