Ellen Considine

Ellen Considine: Indonesia’s air quality got worse after China banned plastic waste imports

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:42:03 +0000

Ellen Considine: Indonesia’s air quality got worse after China banned plastic waste imports Gabriela Rocha Sales Tue, 06/02/2026 - 13:42

Brigitta Rongstad Strong

Copied from the original for archival purposes.

Written by Brigitta Rongstad Strong

Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Indonesia’s air quality got worse after China banned plastic waste imports

New research links a global waste policy shift to increased air pollution from open burning at Indonesian dump sites

When China banned plastic waste imports in 2018, countries like the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan didn’t stop exporting plastic waste — they diverted their shipments to countries in Southeast Asia.

New research led by CIRES Fellow Ellen Considine shows that air pollution in Indonesia worsened in 2018 and 2019, when the country began receiving some of the plastic waste that previously went to China. Municipal waste collection is limited in Indonesia and open burning of solid waste is common.

The work, published today in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series C: Applied Statistics, highlights a recurring environmental justice issue: wealthy nations exporting pollution and the consequences in lower-income countries with less capacity to refuse or manage it.

“When high-income countries ship plastic waste to low- and middle-income countries, more plastic waste tends to be burned,” said Considine, who is also an assistant professor of Geography at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. “This releases air pollutants that can cause respiratory disease, cancer, or even death to local residents.”

Considine and her co-author, Rachel Nethery from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, leveraged satellite data to evaluate changes in fine particulate matter at 356 open dump sites in Indonesia before and after China’s ban on plastic waste imports. Fine particulate matter is the air pollutant of greatest concern for human health because it consists of particles small enough to penetrate human lungs and enter the bloodstream.

“Previous studies of the impact of plastic waste burning on air quality have been more localized, for instance by deploying an air quality monitor in a couple of locations for a few months,” Considine said. “Our approach is powerful because it allows us to look at air pollution changes over a large study region and time period and identify a connection to plastic waste imports.”

The team used advanced statistical methods to determine how much of the increase in air pollution was due to China’s policy change and waste burning versus other factors that vary over time, like weather.

The results suggest the policy change and waste burning caused an average 3.3 percent increase in fine particulate matter at open waste dump sites in Indonesia in 2018 and 2019 compared to 2012 to 2017. The potential health impacts are significant; the increase in fine particulate matter corresponds with an approximate 1.9 percent increase in mortality risk from lung cancer and a 3.5 percent increase in mortality risk from lower respiratory infections.

“Methods like this, for evaluating the impact of policies, have historically been developed by economists but have more recently been adapted by public health and environmental scientists,” Considine said.

The analysis reveals a potential chain reaction after China’s ban: some of the plastic waste that used to end up in China was diverted to Indonesia, leading to more open dumping and burning of plastic waste, which generated more fine particulate matter air pollution.

Considine and Nethery’s work supports recent decisions by Indonesia and Malaysia, another country impacted by China’s policy change, to ban plastic waste imports. The team’s approach can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of these and future policies related to plastic waste and open burning.

“I am inspired by stories of air pollution research being used to inform policy decisions, ” Considine said. “Efforts like ours help fill critical evidence gaps in places and for applications with more limited data.”

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Ellen Considine selected as a 2026 GeoCAFE Scholar

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 20:51:41 +0000

Ellen Considine selected as a 2026 GeoCAFE Scholar Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 04/27/2026 - 14:51

Over the next year, Assistant Professor of Geography and CIRES Fellow Ellen Considine will join a national cohort of scholars working to bridge the gap between the geosciences and health sciences. The GeoCAFE Scholars program aligns closely with Considine’s role at CIRES, where she serves as a long-term scientific ambassador to the geosciences from the field of environmental health biostatistics. She is excited to engage with peers approaching this challenge from across disciplines. Considine will connect with the cohort in person at the annual conferences of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) North American Chapter and the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

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Ellen Considine Joining the Department of Geography and CIRES

Gabriela Rocha Sales — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:52:11 +0000

Ellen Considine Joining the Department of Geography and CIRES Gabriela Rocha Sales Mon, 12/08/2025 - 13:52

In August 2025, Ellen Considine started as an Assistant Professor of Geography and a Fellow of CIRES (the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences). She is also a faculty affiliate of the new Public Health program at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

Ellen’s research focuses on the application of innovative data science methods to address environmental health challenges, both to evaluate the status quo and to design data-driven monitoring and intervention strategies to promote public health and equity. Recent examples of her work include investigating the air quality impacts of nation-level plastic waste policies (via the mechanism of open burning) using a combination of remotely sensed data and causal inference methods, and developing a framework with which reinforcement learning (a branch of AI) can be used to optimize issuance of heat alerts for public health.

She received her PhD in Biostatistics from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Previously, as an undergraduate at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder (BS in applied math, minors in geography and economics), Ellen worked in Earth Lab, mentored by Colleen Reid. In October 2025, Ellen was welcomed back to Earth Lab and gave a research talk – recording available.

In both Fall 2025 and Spring 2026, Ellen is teaching GEOG 3023: Statistics & Geographic Data.

CIRES also published an article, welcoming Ellen to our faculty!

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