COMMENT | We should not be the world's dumping ground!
COMMENT | Prominent human rights activist Firdaus Husni recently tweeted: “Why are we making a big brother out of one country and taking the trash back from another?”
This is a perplexing question indeed.
Let’s start with the matter of accepting a container full of plastic trash from America.
On March 20, it was reported: “Malaysia will be detaining a container from Los Angeles, US, suspected to be carrying commercial plastic waste when it arrives at Port Klang on Monday (March 22).
"Environment and Water Minister Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man in a statement said the Department of Environment (DOE) had received the information from Sahabat Alam Malaysia on March 12 that a container from Los Angeles is believed to be containing plastic waste.
"He said DOE, the authority in the control of cross-border plastic waste under the Basel Convention which came into effect on Jan 1, found there were no applications for the import of plastic waste received from the exporting country.”
Only one week later, on March 31, the environment minister appears to have reversed this position completely: “Tuan Ibrahim said on Tuesday that the US shipment, which arrived on Saturday and had been thought to be hazardous, was found to be clean, homogenous polyethene waste, as required under its import licence.
"The DOE confirms that the plastic waste is in compliance with the criteria of B3011 Basel Convention," he said in a statement.
The only words that come to my mind are “highly...
COMMENT | Prominent human rights activist Firdaus Husni recently tweeted: “Why are we making a big brother out of one country and taking the trash back from another?”
This is a perplexing question indeed.
Let’s start with the matter of accepting a container full of plastic trash from America.
On March 20, it was reported: “Malaysia will be detaining a container from Los Angeles, US, suspected to be carrying commercial plastic waste when it arrives at Port Klang on Monday (March 22).
"Environment and Water Minister Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man in a statement said the Department of Environment (DOE) had received the information from Sahabat Alam Malaysia on March 12 that a container from Los Angeles is believed to be containing plastic waste.
"He said DOE, the authority in the control of cross-border plastic waste under the Basel Convention which came into effect on Jan 1, found there were no applications for the import of plastic waste received from the exporting country.”
Only one week later, on March 31, the environment minister appears to have reversed this position completely: “Tuan Ibrahim said on Tuesday that the US shipment, which arrived on Saturday and had been thought to be hazardous, was found to be clean, homogenous polyethene waste, as required under its import licence.
"The DOE confirms that the plastic waste is in compliance with the criteria of B3011 Basel Convention," he said in a statement.
The only words that come to my mind are “highly suspicious”.
I believe I first wrote on this issue two years ago, when I first started to understand a little about the highly controversial plastic recycling industry in Malaysia.
I wrote about how illegal recycling was in fact harming rather than helping the environment: “The fact is that the massive amounts of plastic now being imported into Malaysia is being handled in the quickest and dirtiest way possible to turn a quick buck.
"The methods used are thus in fact extremely harmful to the environment, in terms of burning plastic fumes, increased landfills, and the poisoning of soil and groundwater - especially when the massive scale involved is taken into account.”
A riveting video expose produced by 60 Minutes Australia showed the ugly tale of exactly how this happens in excruciating detail.
The most relevant explanation for why all this is happening in Malaysia is, of course, because it makes a small number of people a whole lot of money.
Selling our dignity
Given that such profit motives have caused such devastating environmental destruction, we are forced to ask: What exactly happened in between finding that the US shipment was bad trash and deciding it was "good" trash only a week later?
It is painful to have to ask questions like this, but we do live in a country where time and again, we have seen the public good sacrificed so that a select few can gain.
It turns out that Malaysia has become one of the leading destinations for trash since China very wisely decided to ban imports in 2018.
China was also in the news recently, when our foreign minister seemed to act in an extremely deferential fashion to the Chinese foreign minister, referring to him as "big brother".
This sparked considerable controversy given that our relationship with China should be one of two equally sovereign nations. Should not the days of our kingdoms paying tributes to Chinese dynasties be long over?
In our current geopolitical context, being seen to favour one side over another in the China-US competition is likely to be detrimental for Malaysia. Malaysia is likely better off maintaining its traditionally neutral foreign policy.
In any case, while the timing of these two events was coincidental, it still leaves this bad taste in the mouth as if we are taking all of the trash that "big brother" does not want to deal with.
Should we be selling our future and dignity this way?
This latest controversy of being a "dumping ground" brings to mind the Australian rare earth mining case once again.
An Australian mining company digs up rare earth in Australia but refuses to process it there because of the harm it causes to its environment. Massive though Australia is in terms of land size, its citizens simply would not accept the building of a rare earth processing factory there.
So what do they do instead? They open up a factory here in Malaysia, where we - with our much smaller landmass - seem to be willing to let them do so - for a price.
This factory produces radioactive waste as part of its process. There was an effort to compel the mining company to take this radioactive waste back to Australia, but they refused.
So basically, the Australian company gets all the good stuff and pays us to let them dump all the bad stuff here in Malaysia.
And when we say "pays us", the truth of course is that "us" doesn’t include every Malaysian. It’s not uncommon for the rich to get richer from such deals, while the poor not only don’t get any direct monetary benefit - but have to bear the brunt of the environmental damage.
This pattern really needs to stop.
Moving forward, we should bear firmly in mind that Malaysia is not anybody’s "little brother", and we for sure are not anyone’s "dumping ground"!
NATHANIEL TAN works with Projek Wawasan Rakyat (POWR). Twitter: @NatAsasi, Clubhouse: @Nathaniel_Tan, Email: nat@engage.my.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
