Malaysian Housing Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin said in Friday that Malaysia was taking steps to limit the import of plastic waste-plans to gradually ban imports of all kinds of waste plastics within 3 years, including cleaned waste plastics, Reuters reported. At a press conference in Friday, Zuraida said Malaysia would ban licensing of imported plastic waste.
As of last week, Malaysia had not issued a license for plastic waste for 3 months. ' We will limit the import of plastic waste from developing countries, and we currently only import better quality plastic waste from the United States, Europe and Japan.
Zuraida Kamaruddin, responsible for overseeing the related waste management sector in Malaysia, stressed. Malaysia has become one of the leading exporters of plastic waste in the United States, Britain and other countries.
From January to July this year, Malaysia has received about 500,000 tonnes of waste plastics. According to the United Nations trade database and the Waste Recycling Industry Association (Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries.)
Statistics, the United States, the world's largest exporter of waste plastics, exported 178238 tonnes of waste plastics to Malaysia from January 2018 to July, almost twice times the number of scrap plastics exported to Thailand.
The UK is transporting one-fourth of its waste to the Malay West. Many factories in Malaysia are engaged in the disposal of plastic waste, but most of these factories are unlicensed.
They use low-end technology and environmentally harmful methods to recycle waste.
Zuraida said the authorities would take action to close the illegal factories. Malaysia plans to stop waste plastic imports within 3 years!