IN a working-class neighbourhood of Myanmar’s Yangon, plastic waste was piled a metre high, the toxic product of what a recent investigation said was rampant dumping of Western trash.

For several years, sites across Shwepyithar township have been filling up with trash, choking fields, blocking monsoon drains and causing fire risks.

The trash was the runoff of global plastic production, which has more than doubled since the start of the century to 460 million tonnes per year.

“In the past, during the rainy season I could pick watercress from this field to eat,” one resident told AFP, asking not to be identified for security reasons.

“Because of the plastic waste, now we can’t get any watercress to eat. Instead, we get a smell.”

An investigation released this week by collaborative newsroom Lighthouse Reports and six partners found some of the waste dumped in Myanmar comes from the West.

The mix included wrapping and containers for products ranging from Danone yoghurt to Polish company Spomlek’s cheese.

Items from German-owned UK supermarket Lidl and pasta packaging from Canada’s Unico have also been found.

None of these originated in Myanmar, but they ended up there despite a law prohibiting the import of plastic waste unless it was clean and ready to recycle.

The ban was imposed after China stopped accepting foreign plastic waste in 2018.

Several local recycling factories admitted to Lighthouse Reports that waste they cannot process was often dumped or burned.

Porous border

Just how the waste entered Myanmar, and in what quantities, was unclear.

The investigation suggested Thailand was a key passage for illegally exported plastics.

The United Nations Comtrade data showed most of Myanmar’s plastic waste imports came from Thailand.

Almost 7,500 tonnes entered in 2021, the last year Comtrade reported figures.

But the roughly 2,400km border the countries share was extremely porous and crossed with ease by traffickers and smugglers.

Officials on both sides of the border do little to inspect arriving waste, Lighthouse Reports said.

“The data collected is often out of date, and there’s no check on that data,” said Willie Wilson, former vice chair of Interpol’s Pollution Crime Working Group, referring not just to Comtrade but all trade data.

“We’re left with this fog of misdeclared, missing data. It’s a licence to hide in plain sight.”

In July, Myanmar’s junta said there was a US$1.63 billion (RM7.7 billion) difference between what Thailand said it exported to Myanmar, and what Myanmar said it imported from Thailand.

The yawning discrepancy “might be caused by illegal trade”, its Illegal Trade Eradication Steering Committee said.

AFP contacted several of the companies whose products were found in Myanmar to ask how they might have arrived, but received no immediate reply.

Shwepyithar locals told AFP much of the waste dumped in their neighbourhood came from recycling factories in a nearby industrial zone.

But the risks of protesting such a move in Myanmar, which has been run by a military junta since a 2021 coup, were high.

It has left an open area in Shwepyithar, once earmarked for a football field, transformed into a morass of plastic waste, one resident said.

“I know it’s not good for the long term,” she told AFP, requesting anonymity to speak about the sensitive issues.

“I don’t like it at all, but we can’t do anything,” said another, who similarly spoke on condition of anonymity. – AFP, October 13, 2023.