The government of Malaysia has told Western governments to stop sending rubbish to them.
Britain, France, America and other countries send millions of tons of rubbish to Malaysia each year, with most of it coming from Britain. The rubbish incudes plastic straws and spoons, cotton ear buds and plastic wrapping. Asked why we Britain does this, the Secretary of State for the Environment said “Well, we don’t want to keep the rubbish, obviously, and, even with the increases in postage, it’s cheaper to send it by post to another country, so it becomes their problem, not ours. Plus, it’s a great laugh when some poor Malaysian person opens a parcel from the West, thinking it might be aid, and it turns out to be garbage instead.”
However, the average Malaysian doesn’t find it so funny. One parent said he had ordered some Bluetooth headphones from Amazon for his daughter’s birthday, and was very excited to open a cardboard box that arrived the next day, until he saw that it contained used women’s sanitary products, which made him and his family sick for a week. To make things worse, the sender’s address had been incorrectly filled in as an address in Singapore. Fortunately, he recognised from the postage stamps, that the parcel had come from Britain.
A leading environmentalist from Greenpeace said that countires should dispose of their own waste themselves, and recycle as much as possible, adding, in a slightly irritated way, "Forget about not flying by plane. All this rubbish is a greater threat to the environment and we shouldn't be producing it in the first place."
