Plastic waste from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, France, the US and Britain is being used to fuel tofu production in Indonesia, the Guardian has learned.

Five factory owners in an industrial village in East Java, and one environmental organisation told the Guardian that imported plastic is burned daily to fuel furnaces in factories that produce tofu, prompting concern about serious health impacts.

Each day about 60 tofu factories in Tropodo fire up their boilers and fryers and then feed them with a combination of plastic waste, wood and coconut husks, producing about 60 tonnes of tofu that is distributed in the region, including to Indonesia’s second-largest city Surabaya. The tofu is not sold outside Indonesia.

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