Malaysia Shipping 3,000 Tons of Plastic Waste Back to Rich Countries

Malaysia doesn’t want to be a dumping ground for the plastic waste of rich nations like the U.S., UK, Canada and Australia. So they’re shipping the garbage back to where it came from, the country’s environment minister told reporters Tuesday.

Yeo Bee Yin, minister of energy, technology, science, environment and climate change, told reporters that 60 large containers of rubbish had been imported illegally to Malaysia. And now he’s sending all 3,000 tons back.

Malaysian officials have listed 14 countries of origin for the trash, including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain, France and Japan. The U.S. is high on the list of trashiest exporters as the world’s top exporter of plastic waste.

Malaysia has already shipped five containers of contaminated waste back to Spain.

After China banned the import of plastic waste last year, 7 million tons of trash had nowhere to go. So Malaysia picked up the flack as trash-heaped ships sailed to Southeast Asia instead, making Malaysia the world’s main destination for plastic waste.

Just in that year, dozens of recycling factories have popped up in Malaysia, many operating without licenses. And communities across Malaysia are complaining about environmental problems.

Malaysia isn’t the first Asian country to reject rubbish from rich countries.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had the government hire a private shipping company to take 69 containers of trash back to Canada. If Canada wouldn’t accept them, Duterte said the garbage would be left in Canada’s territorial waters.

Canada agreed to accept the trash, saying the waste was exported to the Philippines without government consent.

Yeo pointed out that citizens in countries like the U.S. are often unaware of where their trash lands. When we think our waste is being recycled, it is actually often dumped in Malaysia. She urged governments of developed nations to investigate companies that use countries like Malaysia as dumping grounds for plastic and other trash.

And this isn’t always just plastic. It’s plastic that’s been set on fire. Plastic unsuitable for recycling is burnt, releasing toxic chemicals. The other option is to dump them in landfills, creating 20-foot-high mountains of waste that contaminate soil and water.

Malaysia supported a proposal by Norway at the 14th Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention in Geneva, calling for plastic waste export to require prior informed consent. That means the country receiving shipments of trash would have to green-light it beforehand.

About 187 countries are part of the Basel Convention. The U.S. has yet to ratify the pact.