JAKARTA: Indonesia has sent back a consignment of Canadian paper waste, imported via the United States, because it was contaminated with material including plastic, rubber and diapers, the environment ministry said.
Indonesia is the latest Southeast Asian country to send back trash amid a spike in imports from Western countries after China banned imports, disrupting the global flow of millions of tons of waste each year.
Environment ministry official Sayid Muhadhar said by telephone five containers, or around 100 tons, of waste had now been sent back to Seattle from Indonesia’s second-biggest city of Surabaya.
“This is very simple. Indonesia does not allow imports of trash,” Muhadhar said.
“In Surabaya, what happened was we were supposed to get paper scrap, but instead it came with other materials such as plastic bags, rubber, plastic bottles, plastic pouches from cooking oil and soap,” Muhadhar said.
The ministry did not name the company that had exported the waste, but said it was the first time in around five years that scrap had been re-exported.
“It’s been happening more because China has shut down its recycling facilities, so other countries have to look for new places,” said Muhadhar.
Last month, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered his government to hire a private shipping company to send 69 containers of garbage back to Canada and leave them within its territorial waters if it refused to accept them.
Malaysia also said recently said it would send as much as 3,000 tons of plastic waste back to the countries it came from.
Indonesia becomes latest Southeast Asian country to return waste to the West
Indonesia becomes latest Southeast Asian country to return waste to the West
- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte last month ordered his government to send 69 containers of garbage back to Canada
Airlines hike ticket prices as war against Iran propels fuel costs
- Conflict deals double blow to Indian airlines already hit by Pakistan airspace ban
CANBERRA, NEW DELHI: Australia’s Qantas Airways, Scandinavia’s SAS and Air New Zealand announced airfare hikes on Tuesday, blaming an abrupt spike in the cost of fuel caused by the Middle East conflict.
Jet fuel prices, which were around $85 to $90 per barrel before US-Israeli strikes on Iran, have soared to between $150 and $200 per barrel in recent days, New Zealand’s flag carrier said as it suspended its financial outlook for 2026 due to uncertainty over the conflict. The war, which disrupted shipping via the world’s most vital oil export route, has sent oil prices surging, upending global travel, pushing airline tickets on some routes sky-high, and sparking fears of a deep travel slump that could lead to widespread grounding of planes.
FASTFACT
Flight disruptions due to the Middle East conflict add to problems at IndiGo whose CEO Pieter Elbers stepped down on Tuesday.
“Increases of this magnitude make it necessary to react in order to maintain stable and reliable operations,” an SAS spokesperson said in a statement, adding it had implemented a “temporary price adjustment.”
The largest Scandinavian airline said last year it had temporarily adjusted its fuel hedging policy due to uncertain market conditions and that it had no fuel consumption hedged for the following 12 months. Several Asian and European airlines, including Lufthansa and Ryanair, have oil hedging in place, securing a part of their fuel supplies at fixed prices. Finnair, which had hedged over 80 percent of its first quarter fuel purchases, warned, however, that even the availability of fuel could be at risk if the conflict dragged on.
Qantas said in addition to increasing international fares, it was exploring redeploying capacity to Europe as airlines and passengers seek to evade disruptions in the Middle East
Airspace restrictions in the Middle East have dealt another blow to Indian airlines, which count the region as a corridor for flights to Europe and the US since Pakistan banned Indian carriers from its airspace last year.
As war in the Middle East forces flight rescheduling and re-routing, Indian airlines have limited options because they can’t fly over Pakistan either.
The country’s biggest international carriers Air India and IndiGo did not operate 64 percent of their 1,230 scheduled flights to the Middle East, Europe and North America in the last 10 days, Cirium data shows.
“It is a double whammy for Indian airlines which fly international routes,” said Amit Mittal, an independent aviation expert.
Pakistan has banned Indian carriers from its airspace since last April following military tensions between the two neighbors.
