Plastic milk bottles infested with maggots find their way to Malaysian shores. So do plastic bread wrappers originating in Canada, Japan and France.
It does not end there.
Industrial electric cables disguised as copper from Britain and even plastic cups used for drinking holy zamzam water in Saudi Arabia are covertly shipped to the country.
All this results in thousands of tonnes of waste rotting away in containers that have remained unclaimed in several ports across Malaysia. But the country is not alone, reports Bernama.
Other South-east Asian countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are also known to serve as the world's garbage bins, receiving waste from developed countries like the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, Belgium and Canada.
And the situation has worsened after China imposed restrictions on the import of recyclable paper and plastic in January last year.
Elsewhere in Asia, Viet Nam News reports that Hanoi alone generates more than 6,200 tonnes of garbage each day. Only 70 cent of this is collected and treated while the remaining 30 per cent is dumped into the environment.
Tensions over the general decay of the environment remain elsewhere too.
The Manila Bulletin, from the Philippines, shares the chagrin and dismay of more than 50,000 people who worked at the country's popular beach resorts in Boracay, when President Rodrigo Duterte decided to abruptly shut down the place to tourists in April last year - to reverse the environmental damage to the resort island.
