India, June 7 -- It is strange, and sinister, how garbage travels.

An empty packet of chips from the US, a diaper discarded in Germany and a plastic bottle from the Netherlands have all ended up with rice farmers-turned-trash miners in Indonesia. Primeval forests are being razed in parts of that country to make space for "trash towns".

Since 1992, this chain of islands has been "processing" thousands of tonnes of plastic waste a year, with the mounds turning fields barren and grey. In just one example, in the village of Gedangrowo in East Java, all 150 families have switched to drying the plastic shipped in from the Global North, and selling it to tofu and cracker factories for fuel.

Elsewhere, 40 tribes living in Agbogbloshie - now cl...