Hanoi (VNA) – Indonesia hasreturned seven shipping containers of illegally imported waste to France andHong Kong, said the country’s authorities on July 30, marking the latest moveby a Southeast Asian nation to send back rubbish to their places of origin.

The containers were loaded with acombination of garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in violation ofimport rules, according to customs officials on Batam Island.

Earlier, Indonesian customs spokesmanSumarna said that five containers were destined for Hong Kong and two wereheaded back to France.

Authorities were still waiting forclearance to return another 42 containers of waste at the port, includingshipments from the US, Australia, and Germany.

Indonesia has stepped up monitoring ofimported waste in recent months as part of a push back against serving as adumping ground for foreign trash.

The country notified its 15 leading garbageexporters on the new regulations, which state that exporters have to registerand Indonesian agencies will increase customs checkups in border areas andimpose heftier punishments to violators.

For years China received the bulk of scrapplastic from around the world but closed its doors to foreign refuse last yearin an effort to clean up its environment.

Huge quantities of waste have since beenredirected to Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Indonesia and thePhilippines. Following China’s decision, data from the statistics agency showedIndonesia’s imports of plastic waste surged 141 percent last year to 283,000tonnes.

Around 300 million tonnes of plastic areproduced every year, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), withmuch of it ending up in landfills or polluting the seas, in what has become agrowing international crisis.-VNA