This picture taken on July 22, 2019 shows villagers sifting through plastic waste in the village of Bangun. – Bangun is among several poor communities in Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, that has carved a living from mining waste, much of it from Western nations including the United States, England, and Belgium, as well as the Middle East.
Around two-thirds of the town’s residents eke out a living sorting and selling discarded plastic bottles, wrappers and cups back to local companies, and after China blocked imports of foreign garbage early this year — the pile is growing. Muharram Atha Rasyadi, a plastics campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia says the situation has “become worse” since China’s ban.Up to 40 dump trucks, a day rumble into Bangun to unload garbage outside people’s homes or in vast fields where it forms mountains of waste sometimes as high as rooftops.
Sitting on her haunches surrounded by mounds of trash, local mother Pumisna reached her filthy hands into a pile of refuse and began sorting through the bits of aluminium, plastic bottles and cups before her. There are few other jobs going and community leader M. Ikhsan brushed off any suggestion that his town’s large-scale scavenging damaged the environment or put anyone’s health at risk.
Indonesia is already the world’s second-biggest marine polluter behind China and has pledged to reduce plastic waste in its waters some 70 percent by 2025.
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