<
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/may/10/tofu-plastic-indonesia>
"Plastic waste from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, the US and Britain
is being used to fuel tofu production in Indonesia, the Guardian has learned.
Five factory owners in an industrial village in East Java, and one
environmental organisation told the Guardian that imported plastic is burned
daily to fuel furnaces in factories that produce tofu, prompting concern about
serious health impacts.
Each day about 60 tofu factories in Tropodo fire up their boilers and fryers
and then feed them with a combination of plastic waste, wood and coconut husks,
producing about 60 tonnes of tofu that is distributed in the region, including
to Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya. The tofu is not sold outside
Indonesia.
“We use plastic because it is cheaper,” said one factory owner, asking to
remain anonymous.
The open burning of waste is banned in Indonesia but it remains a common way to
dispose of waste across the archipelago.
In one Tropodo factory, alongside domestic plastic waste and even discarded
rubber from a nearby shoe factory sit huge piles of imported foreign plastic,
among them a dog food packet from New Zealand, and cheese wrappers from France.
A different factory owner, Wahyuni, said they burn through a truckload of
imported plastic every two days, which costs about $13, compared with $130 for
the same amount of wood. Truckloads varied in weight but could be up to three
tonnes.
The
Guardian visited five factories and all burned imported foreign waste,
although the amounts varied.
Indonesians consume an average 8kg of tofu per person annually, according to
the Indonesian Bureau of Statistics (BPS), but production of the protein-rich
staple is causing concern among environmental groups such as Ecoton, which
monitors illegal dumpsites near paper mills and tofu factories.
“Non-recyclable plastic scraps are sold [as fuel] to industries such as tofu
production. It is only the paper mill scrap that can provide them with a
continuous and sufficient amount of cheap fuel,” said Ecoton’s Dr Daru
Setyorini.
“It’s very easy to find trash from rich countries [at the factories],
especially the United States and Australia,” she added."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
