Koo Ze Quan (left) and Tan Siew Hoon stand on a mountain of plastic waste at an illegal factory in Jenjarom, Malaysia. Photo: RNZ / Nita Blake-Persen
NZ's role in the Malaysian plastics dumping ground
Thousands of tonnes of plastic that New Zealand used to send to China for recycling is now going to Malaysia, where illegal factories are burning and dumping the waste they can’t process. Nita Blake-Persen travelled to Malaysia for Insight to investigate how the lives of local people and the environment are being affected.