located: | United Kingdom |
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editor: | Shira Jeczmien |
In a joint investigation between The Telegraph and Unearthed (Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit), U.K. household waste has been found dumped across several illegal sites in Malaysia. From Fairy dishwasher tablets and Sainsbury’s shopping bags to Tesco finest crisps, waste deemed ‘recyclable’ and seemingly binned as such has found itself piling up atop mounts of tettered plastics and rubbish, amidst a scenery of palm trees and what used to be glistening golden sands approximately one hour drive from the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
This is just one site of many along the Southeast Asian country. In another location close by, reporters from the investigation have found recycling bags from U.K. authorities, which have been ripped open and their insides, filled with more British trade-mark packaging, littered all around. Another site, some 140 miles away was discovered with similar traits. Furthermore, as Greenpeace reports, “Residents in the area have complained that fumes from recycling factories operating without the correct permits have kept them awake at night and left them concerned about the effect on their health.” A Telegraph video of the revelations depicts an ashed swamp between the greenery where plastic has supposedly been illegally burnt.
The U.K. is a long-term culprit of disposing its plastic waste outside of the nation for recycling instead of doing so locally, with most of its plastic recycling waste heading off to China. But 2018 saw China ban plastic recycling imports and with that, the British nation has been disposing its plastic waste in nations already struggling with heavy water pollution—Malaysia being one of them. According to Greenpeace, between January and June 2018, the U.K. alone exported more than 88,000 tonnes of plastic scrap to Malaysia, which adds up to over a third of the country’s total plastic waste.
Greenpeace has been calling out the U.K. for its divestment of plastic waste disposal from China to Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia since June, when this was already beginning to reveal its impact on the countries—which are already within the top ten countries where plastic pollution is highest in their surrounding oceans. In response, Greenpeace U.K. ocean plastic campaigner Fiona Nicholl said that “Instead of just moving our plastic scrap around the globe, we should turn off the tap at the source. The industry is churning out single-use plastic at an alarming rate, with global production set to quadruple by 2050 – that’s clearly more than our recycling system can cope with.”
There are several—if not more—issues at play here. The excessive and relentless production of single-use plastics in the U.K. (and beyond) married together with a breach of EU laws that demand plastics recycled abroad must be done so under similar conditions as back home and finally a strained situation in Malaysia that has seen the country take on more than its resources are capable of processing in light of China’s ban on plastic waste import. Together these ingredients make for a toxic cocktail that is already showing its grave impact on the local environment; on citizens’ health and their livelihoods.
There is currently no more information on who is responsible for this environmental and political sham, but urgent measures to halt the U.K. from illegally dumping its waste elsewhere should be high on the agenda, as ultimately, no nation will be exempt from the side-effects from the destruction of our planet.
Photo: Flickr/Clifton Beard