February 18, 2021 8:37 AM
PETALING JAYA: The UK exported 63% more plastic waste to Malaysia last year, according to a Greenpeace report, with its country representative urging more responsible recycling by developed countries.
The Greenpeace report published on Tuesday highlighted how the UK exported 537,000 tonnes of plastic waste in 2020, roughly the same amount (539,000 tonnes) in 2019.
The volume of waste exported to Malaysia rose from 40,007 tonnes to 65,316 tonnes.
“Malaysia and other countries should not be used as dumping ground,” said Greenpeace Malaysia campaigner Heng Kiah Chun in a statement to FMT.
“Developed countries should stop putting their responsibility onto other countries for their own plastics problem and put in place policies to reduce single-use plastics with the aim of a complete end from its source.”
Heng noted that globally, only 9% of plastic waste produced had actually been recycled and 12% incinerated, with the remaining 79% ending up in landfills or the natural environment.
Describing the exports as part of a “global broken system”, he called for a sustained drive to reduce the use of non-essential plastic, develop sustainable alternatives and to switch to reuse wherever possible.
China’s ban on plastic waste import in January 2018 saw Malaysia emerge as a favourite destination for plastic waste.
While this waste is supposed to be recycled, it ends up in landfills where it is burned and pollutes the local population, as well as in rivers and oceans.
“What the citizens of the UK believe they send for recycling is actually dumped in our country,” former energy, science, technology, environment and climate change minister Yeo Bee Yin was quoted by BBC as saying in 2019.
Malaysia returned 42 containers of illegally imported plastic waste to the UK last year, with Yeo stressing the country would take steps to ensure it did not become “the garbage dump of the world”.
Her successor, Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, yesterday said the Department of Environment (DOE) had returned 254 containers of plastic waste weighing 5,512 tonnes to their countries of origin last year.