May 28, 2019–Amid a decline in trade of plastic waste, Malaysia announced it would return 3,000 tons of plastic trash to exporting countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
“Malaysia won’t continue to be a dumping ground for the developed nations and those responsible for destroying our ecosystem with these illegal activities are traitors,” Malaysia Environmental Minister Yeo Bee Yin, told reporters on Tuesday, according to a report in the South China Morning Post. “We will fight back. Even though we are a small country, we will not be bullied.”
The problem, the Malaysian ministry said, is that countries are shipping low-quality plastics that cannot be recycled — a move that is against the country’s laws.
“Garbage is traded under the pretext of recycling,” she said. “Malaysians are forced to suffer poor air quality due to open burning of plastics which leads to health hazard, polluted rivers, illegal landfills and a host of other related problems.”
Yeo called Malaysian importers of the waste “traitors” to the country’s sustainability. To avoid dumping the waste, the Malaysian government plans to return it to exporting countries and block imports of cargo ships containing illegal waste.
Bans on Waste Imports
China banned waste imports of recyclables starting at the end of 2017. Since then, e-waste exports have been overwhelming facilities in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia have received so much waste, it has overwhelmed their recycling systems, according to a report in the Financial Times.
The Philippine government has said it would return 25 tons of trash to Hong Kong and additional waste to Canada. Thailand has banned 400 types of e-waste from entering its country, according to the South China Morning Post report. Malaysia banned imports of contaminated plastic last October.
International Treaty
By early May, 180 countries had signed onto an international agreement to add a section on plastic waste to the Basel Convention, which regulates trade in hazardous waste. According to an official report of the convention, plastic waste has reached “epidemic proportions” with an estimate 100 million tons of plastic contaminating the world’s oceans.
For more information on the international dialogue and treaty, go to Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions resource page.
