Eight containers of garbage weighing about 210 tonnes will be sent back from Indonesia to Australia. South East nations push back against serving as dumping grounds for foreign trash.
Items like items wood, fabrics and shoes were found in containers by inspectors, when it was meant to be only paper scrap. There was also hazardous material and household trash like used diapers, electronic waste, empty cans and bottles.
Following the inspection the Indonesian environment ministry recommended "the items be re-exported," the agency said in a separate statement Monday.
"This is done to protect the public and Indonesian environment, especially in East Java, from B3 waste," it added, referring to hazardous and toxic materials.
Australian company Oceanic Multitrading sent the waste to Indonesia with help from Indonesian firm PT.MDI, authorities said. Containers with plastic had been sent previously to Indonesia, which was meant to be recycled and later exported.
In 2018, China and India decided to ban imports of foreign plastic waste, and this threw global recycling into chaos, leaving developed nations struggling to find places to send their waste.
Huge quantities of rubbish have since been redirected to Southeast Asia, but opposition to handling exported trash is growing in the region.
Plastic recycling is a big business in Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. However, last week, Indonesia announced that it was sending back 49 containers full of waste to France and other developed nations.
In May, neighbouring Malaysia announced it was shipping 450 tonnes of imported plastic waste back to its sources, including Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
The Philippines, meanwhile, returned about 69 containers of rubbish back to Canada last month, which put an end to a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Shocking images of dead sea creatures with plastic waste in their stomachs from rivers and sea surrounding Southeast Asia has been raising global concern over plastic pollution.
Around 300 million tonnes of plastic are produced every year, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), with much of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become a growing international crisis.
