Malasia making a stand

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Gwenoakes
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Malasia making a stand

Post by Gwenoakes »

Like the title, Malasia has made a stand against 150 mainly rich countries by returning their plastic rubbish.
Out of the 150 countries, 42 have been returned to the UK since the last quarter of 2019.
They are saying that if other countries are trying to make them their rubbish bin then they can 'dream on'.
Thoughts anyone?
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Mo
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by Mo »

There must have been profit in it for someone. On both sides.
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lancashire lass
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by lancashire lass »

Mo wrote:There must have been profit in it for someone. On both sides.


I agree - I can't see how we'd just load our ships with rubbish and dump it in some other country for no reason so some agreement must have been in place in the first instance. Once it became problematic, suddenly western countries became villains but on the bright side, the waste isn't being swept under the carpet so to speak any more and there is a greater awareness of the problem of plastic waste globally.
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Mo
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Re: Malasia making a stand

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Of course the people making the profit are not the people working to reclaim what might be valuable, in possibly dangerous conditions. And who knows what happens to the stuff that has no value - but we can guess.
So now the local governments are stepping in to assess the disadvantages. And we can't pretend that we can keep consuming more and more because we put it in the recycle bin.
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Mo
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by Mo »

Someone put a link on facebook.[url=https://wildminimalist.com/blogs/news/11-things-youre-recycling-wrong?fbclid=IwAR2fY2KkT7C_JjQyrJ7OcnJjXNpl5B45NYr_WygCu0jZzgK6yGDkc0mi_NE
]link on facebook.[/url]

So my belated resolution is to say no when someone asks if I want a receipt for a card payment and carry pen and pad to jot down the total to check my statement. Since the way receipts are printed makes them unsuitable for recycling.
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Gwenoakes
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Re: Malasia making a stand

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Mo wrote:Of course the people making the profit are not the people working to reclaim what might be valuable, in possibly dangerous conditions. And who knows what happens to the stuff that has no value - but we can guess.
So now the local governments are stepping in to assess the disadvantages. And we can't pretend that we can keep consuming more and more because we put it in the recycle bin.


They were my initial thoughts too, LL. But then I thought would the UK accept it back and why if there was an agreement to ship it over in the first place.
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Mo
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Re: Malasia making a stand

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The agreement might have been a contract with someone recycling / disposing /dumping, not the government. Maybe now the government has put tighter rules in place so it can't be accepted.

There is a big fuss when anyone suggests a landfill site here 'not in my backyard', but we happily ship it to someone else's backyard no questions asked.
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lancashire lass
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by lancashire lass »

Mo wrote:Someone put a link on facebook.link on facebook.

So my belated resolution is to say no when someone asks if I want a receipt for a card payment and carry pen and pad to jot down the total to check my statement. Since the way receipts are printed makes them unsuitable for recycling.


I have been saying no to receipts for a little while but most tillers have already printed one off (or maybe they have no option) and then dispose of it in their own rubbish so not really solving the problem. Not all receipts are bad - most are the ink type rather than the thermal type (you can identify it as the paper smells different) so they go into my compost bin anyway. The link to the blog is in the US BTW though most recycling options mentioned are similar to the UK
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Mo
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by Mo »

Yes, I should have said it was a US site.
I hadn't realised there were different kinds of receipts.
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Gwenoakes
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by Gwenoakes »

I didn't realise there were different kinds of receipts either.
I usually say no, if I remember, but like has been said they do tend to print them off and then discard them in the bin, so no really achieving anything.
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by fabindia »

Just to add though - Asia including Malaysia is the biggest plastic polluting region of the planet. I despair just how many unnecessary plastic straws, plastic bags and other rubbish finds its way on to the land and into the sea in this part of the world.

Education has to be a priority in this part of the world else things will only get so much worse.
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Re: Malasia making a stand

Post by Freeranger »

I believe that there was a contract in place to recycle rubbish of a certain type, but then we and Canada and others were accused of sending non-recyclable items in there and so just dumping it on them. Quite rightly, they've said 'no more', and they've started sending some of it back again.
I suppose it's a big problem in developing countries - they see all the advantages that the wealthiest have and want to have them too, even if the infrastructure's not there. Hard to tell them that they can't, or have to be responsible about it when we haven't and are busy dumping all our rubbish on them.
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