In a working-class neighborhood of Yangon, Myanmar, plastic waste is piled one meter high, a toxic product of what a recent investigation shows is rampant Western waste dumping.
For several years, sites in Shwepyithar township have been filling with waste which is choking fields, blocking the drainage of monsoon rains and causing fire hazards.
Waste is the runoff from global plastic production, which has more than doubled since the turn of the century to 460 million tonnes per year.
“Before, during the rainy season, I could pick watercress from this field to eat,” a resident told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“Because of plastic waste, we can no longer eat watercress. Instead, we smell.”
An investigation published this week by collaborative editorial team Lighthouse Reports and six partners found that some of the waste dumped here came from the West.
The mix includes packaging and containers for products ranging from Danone yogurt to cheese from Polish company Spomlek.
Items from German supermarket Lidl in the UK and pasta packaging from Canadian manufacturer Unico were also found.
None of them are from Myanmar, but they arrived there despite a law banning the import of plastic waste unless it is clean and ready for recycling.
The ban was imposed after China stopped accepting foreign plastic waste in 2018.
Several local recycling plants admitted to Lighthouse Reports that waste they cannot process is often thrown away or burned.
Porous edge
It is unclear how waste enters Myanmar and in what quantities.
The investigation suggests that Thailand is a key passage for illegally exported plastics.
According to United Nations Comtrade data, most of Myanmar’s plastic waste imports come from Thailand.
Nearly 7,500 tonnes entered in 2021, the last year figures were published.
But the roughly 2,400-kilometer (1,490-mile) border the two countries share is extremely porous and easily crossed by traffickers and smugglers.
Authorities on both sides of the border do little to inspect the arriving waste, Lighthouse Reports said.
“The data collected is often out of date and there is no control over that data,” said Willie Wilson, former vice-chairman of Interpol’s Pollution Crimes Task Force, referring not only to Comtrade but to all commercial data.
“We’re left with this fog of missing and misreported data. It’s a license to hide in plain sight.”
In July, Myanmar’s junta said there was a difference of $1.639 billion between what Thailand claimed to export to Myanmar and what Myanmar claimed to import from Thailand.
This yawning gap “could be caused by illegal trade”, its steering committee for the eradication of illegal trade said.
AFP contacted several companies whose products were found in Myanmar to ask how they might have arrived, but received no immediate response.
Shwepyithar residents told AFP that much of the waste dumped in their neighborhood came from recycling plants in a nearby industrial zone.
But the risks of protesting such a move in Myanmar, which has been ruled by a military junta since the 2021 coup, are high.
This has left an open area in Shwepyithar once reserved for a football field transformed into a swamp of plastic waste, a resident said.
“I know it’s not good in the long term,” she told AFP, requesting anonymity to speak on these sensitive issues.
“I don’t like it at all,” said another, who spoke similarly on condition of not being identified.
“But there’s nothing we can do.”
