Authors: Joe Brock, Yuddy Cahya Budiman, and Joseph Campbell

At a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile. There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles. These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here.

Author: Jared Paben

The decline in U.S. scrap plastic exports accelerated for the second year in a row, according to recently released U.S. Census Bureau trade data. The bureau recently published trade data for December, allowing Plastics Recycling Update to analyze the full-year 2022 data and compare it with prior years. The data shows U.S. shipments of recovered plastic to foreign destinations totaled 952 million pounds in 2022, down 22% from the prior year. The 2021 export number was down 11% from 2020, which was down 6% from 2019.

Author: Thai PBS World

The Thai cabinet decided today (Tuesday) to ban the import of all plastic waste, effective from January 1st, 2025. Additionally, the import of plastic waste this year and next will be regulated. For the 14 recycling plants located in the tax-free zone, the amount of waste to be imported this year must not exceed their combined production capacity, which is 372,994 tonnes.

Author: Monica Cerbon, translated from Spanish

Some of the companies that received the most plastic waste in the region, most of them American or European, have been accused of damaging the environment in various countries for their treatment of similar products. Interpol warns that this industry hides criminal risks. Only Peru entered 62,100 tons of plastic garbage between 2012 and 2022. An investigation by the Cross-Border Investigative Network of OjoPúblico and PopLab.

Author: Henry Belot

Supermarket giants Coles and Woolworths have been ordered to dump more than 5,200 tonnes of soft plastic – currently being stored at warehouses across New South Wales – into landfill. The NSW Environment Protection Authority is concerned that huge amounts of soft plastic are being dangerously stored at 15 locations due to the suspension of botched recycling initiative REDcycle. REDcycle announced in November that it would pause collections at Woolworths and Coles after reports it was stockpiling plastic rather than recycling it.

Author: U.K. Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has expressed surprise and disappointment after the government disagreed with key recommendations in its report on dealing with the growing problem of plastic waste. The cross-party MPs’ parliamentary scrutiny body conducted an extensive inquiry beginning in July 2021. The headline recommendation of its report, published in November 2022, called for a ban on the export of all plastic waste – a large amount of which ends up being illegally dumped – by the end of 2027.  

Author: Marissa Heffernan

A federal judge ruled that a Burnaby, British Columbia company owes an international shipping company $4.3 million Canadian dollars over plastics shipments rejected by the Thai government, the second such suit brought against the company. That’s about $3.2 million USD. Hapag-Lloyd Aktiengesellschaft took legal action against materials exporter Golden Trust Trading on March 18, 2022 after the shipping giant said it transported 33 containers of PET, PP and PVC film bales from Vancouver to Bangkok in spring 2019 that were rejected by the Thai government.