Malaysia shuts 2 sites over illegal waste as raid linked to Chinese gangs widens
- The raid follows last week’s seizure of 100 containers filled with e-waste bound for illegal smelters run by Chinese gangs in Malaysia
Malaysian authorities have shut down two factories suspected of unlicensed electronic and plastic waste recycling in the northern Kedah state, as the government extended a crackdown on illegal waste imports linked to Chinese gangs.
The factories were closed on Thursday following a raid led by the ministry of natural resources and environmental sustainability, which found 1,600 tonnes of electronic and plastic waste stored at the sites.
“The e-waste factory is estimated to have produced 1,500 tonnes of e-waste on site while the plastic factory produced 100 tonnes of pellets which were packed in bags labelled as fish food,” Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad said in a post on LinkedIn on Friday.
The authorities will prepare investigation papers “to charge both premises on all offences” under the relevant laws, Nik Nazmi said.
If found guilty, the perpetrators will face fines of up to 10 million ringgit (US$2.1 million) and mandatory jail time of up to five years, he said.
The minister said the environment department would also conduct further investigations to find the source of waste stored at the plastic recycling factory, including whether it was imported illegally.
The two factories are located in an industrial zone in the Kuala Muda district, close to the Muda River, a major source of freshwater for the neighbouring Penang state where semiconductor giants such as Intel Corp and AMD have set up factories.
The haul was valued at US$1.7 million, the minister said. Another 195 containers sent from the same port and filled with scrap metal were also discovered at the same raid, he added.
The haul was a sharp spike from the previous year when authorities impounded 47 containers filled with banned materials including plastic and e-waste.
The government believes the imports are the work of a syndicate that ships illegal waste into Malaysia using forged documents.
E-waste comprises discarded electronic devices and components, which contain toxic substances such as lead and mercury that pose health and environmental risks. But they can also hold valuable metals like gold, silver and copper, which criminals can profitably extract by evading costs tied to strict regulations on safe disposal.
Plastic waste is also a perennial problem for Malaysia, which ranks among the world’s top generators of plastic pollution.
Malaysia was ranked the fifth worst contributor of plastic waste to the ocean with each Malaysian tossing out an average of 2.29kg of plastic waste a year, or an estimated total of nearly 76,000 tonnes annually, based on a 2023 survey by British energy firm Utility Bidder.
