Waste News

Toilets: They’re not any easy subject to discuss. Even though eliminating waste from our bodies is an essential function we all must do, talking about how we deal with that…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s decision to categorize the palm oil industry’s solid waste as non-hazardous has triggered environmental concerns. The industry uses huge volumes of a powdered clay called…

JAKARTA — Hundreds of mining concessions across Indonesia lie in areas prone to earthquakes, landslides and floods, making them ticking time bombs for local communities, according to a new report.…

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka has sent back the first batch of hundreds of containers of waste to the U.K., becoming the latest nation in the Global South to push back…

The Aldabra coral atoll is a place of mythical beauty, uninhabited and so lost to the world that chartered flights and boats are the only way to get there. But…

MANILA — Philippine authorities’ latest efforts to clean up Manila Bay, one of the country’s most polluted bodies of water, has come under fire after they dumped truckloads of white…

JAKARTA — Proper management of plastic waste is lacking in coastal communities in Indonesia, the No. 2 contributor to the ocean plastic crisis. That’s the conclusion of a recently published…

MANILA — Land reclamation projects in Manila Bay are expected to resume once Metro Manila transitions from lockdown this month, some part of President Rodrigo Duterte’s flagship “Build, Build, Build”…

A coalition of more than 5,000 villagers and a provincial government in Papua New Guinea has built a legal challenge against the world’s most productive battery nickel plant. The company,…

JAKARTA — As Indonesia ramps up its mining sector to feed the world’s hunger for zero-emission vehicles, it is faced with a problem: what to do with all the waste.…

In 2018, Lauren Biermann was scouring a satellite image of the ocean off the coast of the Isle of May, Scotland, searching for signs of floating seaweed for a project…

JAKARTA — The Waladuna mosque is submerged in a meter of seawater, about 3 feet deep. It’s low tide in northern Jakarta. During high tide, the water creeps up to…

BALI, Indonesia — It’s just after sunrise here in Bali, and a group of locals are preparing to sail their wooden boats out to a bay off Nusa Lembongan, a…

BOSTON/JAKARTA — It had rained all morning across Jakarta on the first Tuesday in February. The rivers in the Indonesian capital quickly filled up, carrying all kinds of debris toward…

Remote islands are often held up as vestiges of pristine wilderness. In stark contrast, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Henderson Island are drowning in piles of plastic. A recent study…

JAKARTA — Authorities in Indonesia have launched an investigation following the discovery of radioactive contamination in an empty lot in a housing complex near a nuclear research facility. The Nuclear…

BALI, Indonesia — Waves roll in over the black volcanic sand on Sogsogan, a beach in southern Bali. Further out, surfers prepare to master the swell. Bali has long been…

On Jan. 25, 2019, the Brumadinho dam collapsed, releasing a slurry of water containing the waste products, or tailings, from the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in southeastern Brazil.…

DUMAGUETE, Philippines — Microplastics for breakfast? It might be likely as a newly published study shows concentrates of small plastic particles, or microplastics, inside the digestive systems of rabbitfish (Siganid…

DAVAO, Philippines – On August 4, 2018, a fisherman found an endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) floating weakly in the Davao Gulf, a diverse marine ecosystem and rich fishing ground spanning 308,000…

MANILA — The Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has filed administrative cases against local government officials for violating waste disposal regulations by allowing open dumpsites within their…

MANILA — In 2013, Coca-Cola Philippines released a new product for the local market: Coke Mismo, packaged in a 300-milliliter (10-ounce) PET bottled and launched at a star-studded event by…

JAKARTA — Indonesia earlier this year condemned the practice of wealthy countries sending it their waste, but is now doing the same by shipping that same waste to other countries…

On October 2nd, the Dutch non-profit The Ocean Cleanup announced that it has successfully developed a device that can capture and collect ocean plastic, moving the organization closer to its…

Around 400 people spread out across the coastline of a beach in the Lekki neighborhood of Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos. Hands in gloves and some faces partly covered by disposable…

While guests on a recent tour through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, USA ate dinner in the lodge, an unexpected guest joined the group: a five-gallon green compost bucket where…

Sanu Kaji Shrestha was wandering along a Cypriot coastline 10 years ago, enjoying some downtime from a workshop he was leading on green energy technology, when he decided to collect…

JAKARTA — A ban on single-use plastics on the Indonesian island of Bali will stay in place, after the country’s top court rejected a challenge by the plastic-recycling industry. The…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to burn waste to fuel power plants in four cities on the island of Java this year as part of efforts to tackle the…

Some of the countries most responsible for the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans have pledged to tackle the problem together, but activists say they’re focusing on the…