Malaysia’s Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Climate Change and Environment and the British High Commission in Malaysia jointly issued a statement on the 25th, announcing that the UK had agreed to ship back 42 containers containing plastic waste from Malaysia.
According to the statement, these containers arrived at the Penang Port in Malaysia between March 2018 and March 2019. They did not comply with relevant import documents and were illegal. Relevant departments of the two countries are cooperating to handle the matter of transporting this batch of “foreign garbage” back to the UK.
Malaysian Minister of Energy, Science and Technology, Climate Change and Environment Yeo Bee Yin said in a statement that the cooperation between the UK and Malaysia on the repatriation of this batch of plastic waste shows that plastic waste pollution is a global problem and requires all countries to Cope with it together.
Yang Meiying said that a British recycling company exported 55,000 tons of plastic waste to Malaysia in about 1,000 containers in the past two years. She said: Malaysia cannot become the world’s dumping ground and we will fight back. Although we are a small country, we must not be bullied by developed countries!
She said that there are companies from other countries that ship polluting plastic waste to developing countries, and she hopes that this cooperation can set an example for these countries to deal with it.
According to a previous report by Malaysia’s “Nanyang Siang Pau”, the country’s government has shut down 140 factories involved in the import and processing of illegally imported waste in the first two months of this year. In addition, the Malaysian federal government also requires each state’s environmental bureau to set up a special team to continue to crack down on “foreign garbage” and illegal factories in the state.
Due to very strict laws on environmental protection issues and high penalties, Western developed countries often need to pay high fees for waste disposal in their own countries, so “shipping to foreign countries” has become their most common choice. The hassle-free and cheapest option. However, this behavior is essentially based on environmental damage to developing countries in Asia.
Before Malaysia, countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and China have also successively introduced restrictions or even banned ” “Foreign garbage” import policy, with the improvement of environmental awareness, more and more developing countries are no longer willing to sacrifice the ecological environment for economic development. You need to be cautious when investing in a granulation plant in Southeast Asia. Customs strictly cracks down on foreign waste, and environmental protection policies are even more severe than those in China. If you are not careful, you will lose everything!
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