Tofu factories fuelled by west's plastic waste pose serious health risk

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.

- Michael Neilson

Five factory owners in an industrial village in East Java and one environmental group said imported plastic was burned daily to fuel furnaces to make tofu, prompting concern about serious health impacts.

Each day about 60 tofu factories in Tropodo fire up their boilers and fryers and feed them with 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, who asked to remain anonymous.

The open burning of waste is banned in Indonesia, but it remains a common way to dispose of rubbish across the archipelago.

In one Tropodo factory, alongside domestic plastic waste and 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.

Another factory owner, Wahyuni, said that every two days his factory burned through a truckload of imported plastic, which cost about $13 (£10) compared with $130 for the same amount of wood. Truckloads could weigh up to three tonnes.