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Jakarta – Through documentary films, foreign activist groups highlight cases of illegal shipment of waste from Canada to a number of developing countries, including Indonesia.

The Fifth Estate, in a documentary, revealed that recycling company Kanda was illegally shipping unsorted household waste.

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This expedition is carried out by burying the unsorted waste in bins that have received export approval.

“The contents of our blue bins are collected and disposed of and 3.3 million tonnes of plastic waste are sorted per year. [Namun] less than ten percent [sampah] plastic is recycled,” The Fifth Estate reporter Gillian Findlay said in a documentary titled “Canadian Recycling Companies Caught Shipping Illegal Trash Overseas,” released Thursday (4/21/2022).

One of the young activists from Indonesia, Aeshnina Azzahra Aqilani (14), also expressed concern over the problem of plastic waste sent from Canada to Indonesia.

He wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, not to dump Canadian plastic waste in Indonesia.

“To the Prime Minister [Kanada], why do you send your waste to my country? You have to manage your waste in your country,” Nina said in the documentary.

The documentary then shows the activities of Nina trying to pick up plastic waste in the Brantas River in East Java with her friends. You can see heaps of plastic waste filling the river banks and getting stuck in factories in the area.

“So paper mills in Indonesia buy waste paper from developed countries, but developed countries, they smuggle their plastic waste to Indonesia because they know that plastic recycling is very difficult and expensive. C That’s why they smuggle them into Indonesia,” Nina said. .

Previously, Nina had written a letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo regarding the issue of plastic imports.

In the letter, Nina mentioned that developed countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe often turn their plastic waste into waste paper imported by Indonesia.

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“Desa Bangun, Mojokerto is the largest dump of imported plastic waste in East Java. Villagers sort imported plastic waste, which sells and does not sell,” he wrote.

According to Nina, sorting plastic waste has an impact on the rivers in her village. The plastic waste has to be washed and the waste from the washing goes into the river. This causes the pollution of the river and has an impact on the death of the fish in it.

Additionally, plastic waste also has the potential to release microplastics measuring less than 5 mm. It is not impossible, microplastics enter the human body.

“If there is microplastic in the river the fish will be contaminated and we eat the fish, the microplastic can cause serious illness in humans,” Nina said.