His weathered face breaks out in a big grin as Keman explains how sifting through rubbish paid for his children's education, one of many in his Indonesian hometown basking in a waste-picking boom.

Governments around the world are grappling with how to tackle the scourge of single-use plastic, but for the people of Bangun trash equals cash.

Around two-thirds of the town's residents eke out a living sorting and selling discarded plastic bottles, wrappers and cups back to local companies, and after China blocked imports of foreign garbage early this year -- the pile is growing.

"I have three kids -- all of them go to university," Keman, who goes by one name, proudly tells AFP as he stands in a field of ankle-deep trash.

"And all that was possible thanks to my hard work scavenging rubbish," the 52-year-old explains.

Bangun is among several poor communities in Java, Indonesia's most populous island, that have carved a living from mining waste, much of it from Western nations including the United States, England, and Belgium, as well as the Middle East.

Once a giant in global recycling, China's decision to block international waste threw the industry into chaos.

Huge quantities of rubbish were instead redirected to Southeast Asia.

Indonesia's plastic waste imports have soared in the past few years, jumping from 10,000 tons per month in late 2017 to 35,000 tons per month by late last year, according to Greenpeace, which warns that plastics prosperity comes at a huge environmental and public health cost.

Muharram Atha Rasyadi, a plastics campaigner with Greenpeace Indonesia says the situation has "become worse" since China's ban.

- 'Extremely profitable' -

Up to 40 dump trucks a day rumble into Bangun to unload garbage outside people's homes or in vast fields where it forms mountains of waste sometimes as high as rooftops.

For years, a handful of local paper mills have been supplying the village with garbage, which is often mixed with legally imported paper scraps, according to environmental activists.

Residents search through the refuse with their bare hands, rakes and shovels -- often with little more protection than cheap cloth masks.

Sitting on her haunches surrounded by mounds of trash, local mother Pumisna reached her filthy hands into a pile of refuse and began sorting through the bits of aluminium, plastic bottles and cups before her.

Trash may earn her a few dollars a day, but sometimes there is another kind of prize hiding inside the rubbish: crumpled foreign currency such as dollar bills, euros and pound sterling.

"I'm looking for money for shopping, my kids' school and food," said the 35-year-old under a makeshift sun awning as she placed plastic waste into three containers.

There are few other jobs going and community leader M. Ikhsan brushed off any suggestion that his town's large-scale scavenging damaged the environment or put anyones health at risk.

Rubbish that can't be recycled was sold to nearby tofu factories where it is used as fuel in furnaces, he said.

"This waste is extremely profitable for my citizens and has helped boost the local economy," Ikhsan said.

- 'Converted into money' -

Environmentalists paint a different picture, saying that non-recyclable plastic was burned at night, belching out toxic fumes around the town, while micro-plastics were getting into local waterways.

Indonesia is already the world's second-biggest marine polluter behind China and has pledged to reduce plastic waste in its waters some 70 percent by 2025.

"It's going to become expensive for us -- expensive for our health system and for future generations to rehabilitate the environment," said Prigi Arisandi, a Goldman Prize-winning environmentalist at NGO Ecoton.

"It's not only Bangun. We have more than five villages being used as dumping sites in East Java."

Indonesia has stepped up monitoring of imported waste in recent months as part of a push back against becoming a dumping ground for foreign trash.

It has sent back containers loaded with a mixture of domestic garbage, plastic waste and hazardous materials in violation of import rules to France, Hong Kong, Australia and the United States.

Meanwhile, other parts of the country are taking aim at plastic waste.

Bus passengers in Indonesia's second-biggest city Surabaya can swap recyclable plastics for free travel while holiday hotspot Bali is rolling out a single-use plastics ban.

But the view from places like Bangun is decidedly different.

"Rubbish is like treasure here," Keman said.

"Why? Because after we dry it in the morning and sort it, it'll be converted into money by the evening."

Tel Aviv beaches fall foul in Israel's passion for plastic
Tel Aviv (AFP) Aug 22, 2019 - In the early morning, when the only sound on Tel Aviv beach is the waves, Yosef Salman and his team pick up plastic debris left by bathers or cast up by the sea.

Working in heat and humidity with large rakes, they scoop plastic cups, cigarette ends, empty sunscreen tubes and soiled babies' nappies.

Also present, but impossible to separate from the sand, are microplastics, tiny particles of plastic debris that have been broken down by sun and salt.

"When it rains... you can see tonnes of plastic in the sand," says Ariel Shay, of the Plastic Free Israel movement, which organises volunteer beach cleanups.

Despite the activities of environmental groups, Israel remains hooked on plastic.

A June report by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) ranked Tel Aviv's coastline as the third most polluted by plastic waste in the Mediterranean, behind Barcelona and southern Turkey.

Valencia, Alexandria, Algiers and Marseille were listed in fourth to seventh places.

With around four million inhabitants, Tel Aviv is Israel's most populous metropolitan area.

"Every time I go to the beach now, I spend my time cleaning -- it's horrible!" complains Shani Zylbersztejn, with an eye on her nine-month-old daughter, who plays with a plastic fork freshly dug from the sand.

In the upper-crust town of Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv, Limor Gorelik, of the environmental protection NGO Zalul, patrols the sands, offering beachgoers bamboo cups and reusable bags in a bid to wean them from single-use plastics.

- Bad habits -

Gorelik blames Israel's passion for plastic on a lack of education and on deeply ingrained habits, such as using disposable tableware for family picnics.

Observant Jews who want a beachfront lunch on Saturdays are forbidden from washing the dishes afterwards, because their faith bans them from working on the Sabbath.

"They're not permitted to wash dishes so they use disposable plastic," Gorelik says.

Even plastic waste dumped in the bins that dot the beaches can end up in the sea, carried by the wind or by birds which rip open garbage bags in search of food.

Independent researcher Galia Pasternak has analysed coastal plastic pollution in Israel.

According to her data, 60 percent of the waste on the beach comes from the bathers themselves.

Some is also borne by currents from Gaza and Egypt in the south or from Lebanon further north.

- Cash for cleanups -

In 2005, Israel's environmental protection ministry launched a programme offering local councils incentives for proven results in cleaning their beaches.

Subject to regular inspection, councils that meet requirements get funding, while failing authorities face cuts or even court, says Ran Amir, head of the environment ministry's marine division.

Amir cites the case of the popular Palmahim beach, south of Tel Aviv.

Palmahim municipal council was taken to court and fined over the state of the beach -- which has since become "one of the cleanest beaches in Israel today", he says.

The ministry's strategy in recent years has also included public service messages on radio and online, along with fines, recycling facilities and education, according to Amir.

"It think it has partially worked," says Pasternak, who helped set up some of those programmes.

Zalul's Gorelik, however, says Israel is still trailing behind other countries.

She says charges introduced in supermarkets in 2017 for plastic bags -- previously given away free -- are too low, at just 0.10 Israeli shekels (0.02 euros/ $0.03) each.

"It's not enough," Gorelik says, adding that even this modest measure does not apply to small grocery stores.

She points to new European Union restrictions on single-use plastics.

"Europeans are the leaders on the subject," she says.

"Here, we are very far away."

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Tel Aviv beaches fall foul in Israel's passion for plastic
Tel Aviv (AFP) Aug 22, 2019
In the early morning, when the only sound on Tel Aviv beach is the waves, Yosef Salman and his team pick up plastic debris left by bathers or cast up by the sea. Working in heat and humidity with large rakes, they scoop plastic cups, cigarette ends, empty sunscreen tubes and soiled babies' nappies. Also present, but impossible to separate from the sand, are microplastics, tiny particles of plastic debris that have been broken down by sun and salt. "When it rains... you can see tonnes of pl ... read more