How Rich Countries Export Plastic Waste to Indonesia, Fueling Health Hazards in Local Communities

This article was originally published as part of the Undark series “What I Left Out.” In this installment, journalist Beth Gardiner shares a story that didn’t make it into her recent book, Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet. It is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Tropodo: A Village Transformed by Plastic Waste

Tropodo is a picturesque village of narrow streets and brightly colored houses, nestled amid lush green fields in eastern Java, Indonesia’s most populous island. Tall chimneys emitting plumes of black smoke rise behind many homes, yet they are barely noticeable from a distance, preserving the town’s rustic charm.

While much of Gardiner’s reporting has focused on the origins of plastic—particularly the role of oil and petrochemical companies in driving its production—her visit to Tropodo highlights where some of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic waste generated annually end up.

The Global Scale of Plastic Waste Burning

According to a landmark study based on data through 2015, about 12 percent of plastic waste is burned globally. Even when this burning occurs in incinerators equipped with air scrubbers and filters, it has been linked to higher rates of premature birth, congenital abnormalities (including heart and neural tube defects), and an increased risk of cancer for those living nearby, research has found.

However, when plastics—which a 2022 Nature study found can contain any of more than 16,000 different chemicals, a quarter of which may pose health concerns—are burned in low-tech furnaces without pollution-reduction technology, the dangers escalate dramatically. This is precisely the case in Tropodo, where informal backyard factories use plastic as fuel to produce tofu, a soy-based staple.

Inside a Plastic-Fueled Tofu Factory

Muhammad Gufron, a solidly built man with a wispy mustache, owns a local tofu factory. He greets visitors in front of a mint green house before leading them down a long alleyway, past laundry drying in the sun, into a building with brick walls riddled with gaps that give it an open-air feel. Gufron, dressed in a powder blue T-shirt, navy shorts, and sandals, begins the tour by directing attention to several small rooms where shredded plastic, faded to near-colorlessness, is heaped against walls and stuffed into sacks.

Throughout the region, waste sorters are seen spreading plastic in the sun to dry it for use as fuel. Gardiner notes that the necessity of this step became clear as she followed Gufron toward his furnace: the intense heat emanating from the black metal cylinder’s blaze was palpable. When he fed a batch of scrap plastic into the fire using a wooden stick, it crackled audibly. The steam generated by this fire is harnessed in the tofu production process.

After just a few minutes inside Gufron’s factory, Gardiner experienced the onset of a headache, underscoring the immediate health risks posed by the toxic fumes.