Recently, reporters from Japan’s Asahi TV station have intensively photographed a village called Mingkai in the suburb of Hanoi, Vietnam. Although it is only an hour's drive from Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, Mingkai Village has been “submerged” by plastic waste from all over the world.
About 80% of the local villagers simply use plastic waste to recycle and make a living. For plastic waste that cannot be recycled and reused, Mingkai Village chooses to incinerate it. The incinerated ash is directly discharged into the local river, which pollutes the river and the sea.
A large amount of hazardous waste from developed countries is putting pressure on Southeast Asian countries, and these countries are gradually losing patience. After Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, Cambodia also began to clean up "foreign garbage."
According to an Associated Press report on the 17th, Cambodian Customs seized 1,600 tons of plastic waste at the seaport terminal in Sihanoukville, filled with 83 containers, 70 of which were shipped from the United States and 13 from Canada. Cambodian officials said they would return the garbage to the United States and Canada. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has made it clear that Cambodia is not a dumping ground for any waste.
Plastic Garbage Container Arriving in Cambodia
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), around 300 million tons of plastics are produced each year, most of which are landfilled or dumped directly into the ocean, which has become an increasingly serious international crisis.
In May of this year, 187 countries included waste plastics under the control of the Basel Convention, giving countries the power to block the import of contaminated or difficult-to-recycle plastic waste. However, a few countries have not joined the convention, including the United States.
More and more Southeast Asian countries have begun to say “no” to “foreign garbage”, but developed countries are also trying various methods to transport garbage to areas that are difficult for local governments to manage, and staged a “foreign garbage” attack and defense war.
