THE Perak Environment Department has been tasked to look into British media reports of UK plastic waste found at an Ipoh dump site.

The Star reported that Perak Environment Committee chairman Abdul Aziz Bari was shocked over reports that quoted BBC as finding a 6m-high mound of plastic waste deep in the jungles of Perak.

“It’s quite embarrassing but I trust the (state environment) department will also check with the Ipoh City Council.

“I am confident we can get to the bottom of this,” he was quoted as saying.

British media had reported that plastic waste from British supermarkets and council recycling departments has made its way to a dump site in Ipoh.

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his co-host, Anita Rani, discovered that “mountains” of plastics from Britain were simply dumped or burned in Malaysia, reported The Mirror.

The duo are hosting a new BBC documentary investigating where UK waste goes, and whether it is being properly recycled.

The environmental catastrophe “has the fingerprints of British supermarkets and council recycling departments” all over it, said the report.

“It’s like some dystopian nightmare… a plastic planet,” Fearnley-Whittingstall was quoted as saying.

Spotted among the waste in Ipoh are British local authority-branded recycling bags, the contents of which should have been recycled in the UK itself.

Aziz, meanwhile, said he was only aware about the UK report from a friend.

“I am not sure how the garbage can arrive here. It could possibly be through ports and containers.

“We will wait for the reports from the department and city council,” he said. – May 27, 2019.