Malaysia has seized dozens of shipping containers containing contraband electronic waste, as it fights against what campaign groups call “waste colonisation”, whereby rich western countries export their rubbish to southeast Asia.
The country’s environment minister, Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, announced that more than 300 suspect containers had been identified in Malaysian ports over the past three months. Of those, 106 have been found to be filled with “e-waste”, consisting of spent electronic components from computers, servers and smartphones.
Most containers had been shipped from Los Angeles with false declarations of their contents, he said, in order to supply illegal processing plants around the country, which are operated by Chinese gangs who strip them of their valuable components in dangerous and unregulated conditions.
Malaysia is one of several Asian countries where poorly paid workers, many of them illegal migrants from even poorer neighbouring nations, sort and recycle the rubbish produced by affluent westerners.
“This is what is called ‘waste colonisation’, where our clean air, water and land are pawned off for the profit of some,” the Malaysia Stop Waste Trade Coalition said. “While the people of developed countries can enjoy a high standard of living, we are the ones who have to bear the consequences of pollution from the remnants of their excessive consumerism.”
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Mageswari Sangaralingam, honorary secretary of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said that Malaysia is becoming “a dumping ground for plastic and electronic wastes from rich countries like the US”, adding: “The containers must not only be sent back but all companies and individuals trafficking or enabling illegal e-waste and plastic waste must be held accountable.”
According to the Basel Action Network (BAN), which monitors the global trade in rubbish, the world generated 62 million metric tonnes of e-waste in 2022, enough to fill 1.5 million trucks, which could form a queue that would encircle the planet.
Thailand and the Philippines are also struggling with illegal waste imports, after moves by China five years ago to restrict the waste that it would accept.
In a raid in March, the Malaysian authorities arrested 50 people and seized tonnes of e-waste at a “break-down factory”, reported to be the size of five football fields, hidden inside an oil palm plantation in Petaling Jaya, on the western edge of Kuala Lumpur. The workers were illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and Nepal.
In 2019, Rodrigo Duterte, then president of the Philippines, threatened war against Canada during a dispute over container-loads of rotting rubbish, including used nappies, illegally shipped to its shores more than five years earlier. Eventually, a ship carrying 69 containers of waste, each weighing 20 tonnes, was sent back to Vancouver.
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“As we have recently found with respect to plastic waste, Malaysia is becoming the target country of choice for illegal traders of e-waste from the US and Canada,” said Jim Puckett, the executive director of BAN.
“It appears we are playing Whac-A-Mole — we have shut down exports to mainland China, then Hong Kong, and now they have turned to southeast Asia as the electronics industry, rather than properly managing their wastes at home, seek out new global hiding places.”
