from Hacker News

Waste Wars: The Afterlife of Trash

by mgav on 2/14/25, 12:42 PM with 5 comments

  • by jimswhims on 2/14/25, 1:47 PM

  • by mgav on 2/14/25, 12:43 PM

    “…what I witnessed in Indonesia. Across the country’s 17,000-odd islands, domestically consumed plastic is so mishandled that 365 tons of it are believed to enter the sea every hour.

    And yet, deep in the highlands of Java, there are hellscapes of imported Western waste — toothpaste tubes from California, shopping bags from the Netherlands, deodorant sticks from Australia — stacked knee-high as far as the eye can see.

    Too voluminous to even attempt to recycle, it is used as fuel in scores of bakeries that supply Java’s street markets with tofu, a culinary staple. The result is some of the most lethal cuisine imaginable, with poisons from incinerated Western plastic ingested hourly by great numbers of Indonesians.…”

  • by nkurz on 2/14/25, 1:32 PM

  • by ZeroGravitas on 2/14/25, 1:15 PM

    I wish the NYT was as harsh and as consistent on Facsism as it is on recycling.

    Apparently their 1996 anti-recycling article broke the paper's hate mail record and they've been returning to that well ever since.

    Now 20 years later they are part responsible for the US's terrible approach to recycling as they enabled the anti-regulation movement in undermining government action on this (and climate change etc.)