Malaysia said on Tuesday that it will return hundreds of tons of plastic waste to its countries of origin beacause it does not want to be the world’s dumping ground anymore.
Every year, about 300 million tons of plastic are produced, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the vast majority ends up in landfills or in the oceans, which causes a contamination that, at the moment, the international community can not manage.
China accepted plastic waste from around the world for years until it stopped doing so last year for environmental reasons. And now several Southeast Asian countries are doing the same.
We urge the developed countries to stop sending their waste to our country,”
said the Minister of Energy, Environment and Sciences, Yeo Bee Yin.
We are going to return it to their countries of origin,”
he added after having inspected several containers filled with waste in Port Klang, the most active port in the country.
Official figures indicate that plastic imports to Malaysia tripled from 2016 to reach 870,000 tons last year.
crhoy.com