Fighting the factories' fearsome fumes

MALAYSIANSKINI | As the lights dim, the machines in illegal factories in Jenjarom in the Kuala Langat District of Selangor begin to operate and the air fills with a pungent, unpleasant smell. Pua Lay Peng explains that this is how illegal operators’ work - a strategy in order to cover up their operations.

“Air pollution is hard to monitor. At night, their machines are at their highest speed, but you can’t see the polluted air, so what can you do? Even if you can smell it, you can’t trace it.”

“Besides, if you complain, the Environment Department will not come at night.”

Ever since Pua realised what was going on, she has not been able to sleep well at night. She even adjusted her sleeping schedule so as to be able to search for the evidence of illegal factories operating at night.

Pua is one of the representatives of Kuala Langat Environmental Action Association and she's fighting a fearsome battle.

At the end of 2017, Pua and several residents found that there were several illegal recycling factories operating secretly in their neighbourhood. They began to search for evidence and managed to identify no less than 48 factories that were involved!

Pua points out that plastic is roughly classified into three types, according to their difficulty to recycle: easy, difficult and very difficult. Compared with the first type, the recycling process for the next two types will release more toxic gas.

The local recycling operator previously dealt with plastic waste which is classified as easy to recycle.

However, in recent times, illegal operators set up factories in Malaysia one after another and they imported large amounts of plastic waste classified as difficult to recycle.

Greenpeace investigations revealed that a significant amount of the imported plastic waste in Malaysia is dealt with “by unlicensed operators who often do not have a proper waste processing facility”, but dump it randomly, burn it openly or landfill the waste. This results in air, land and water pollution.

After Pua and the residents continuously complained, the Selangor state government banned 33 illegal factories in July 2018.

However, with the enforcement agencies and media not paying close attention to the plastic waste issue and monitoring the culprits constantly, the illegal operators quietly resumed their business in Jenjarom.

Last year, Pua and other residents were worried when they found that illegal operators who deal with e-waste and scrap smelters began to set up facilities in their village.

Gathering evidence at night

The day she met Malaysiakini for the interview, Pua was going around Jenjarom to gather evidence of illegal factories operating there.

On the way, she saw a pile of clothes left burning by the roadside and quickly got out of her car and tried to put out the fire.

When she arrived at the destination, she cut off her car engine, quickly melting into the dark and observing the interior of the factory in question.

“You see, that pile is e-waste, most of them are wire casings. They are melting this e-waste and drawing the resulting gasses out directly,” she said.

Pua said she would climb up the fences to take photos, and sometimes would even enter dirty ditches to get important water samples.

Asked how she learned to do these things, she said: “There is no choice, I have to fight desperately for the environment.”

Before imported plastic waste became a national issue, the Kuala Langat Environmental Action Association had listed that illegal factories operating in Jenjarom and repeatedly reported the cases to enforcement agencies and the local assemblyperson. However, there was no action taken against them.

Having exhausted other options, Pua and other residents used drones to film the interior view of those illegal factories and uploaded the video on YouTube.

Then, environmental groups such as Organisation for the Preservation of National Heritage (Peka) and Greenpeace began to give attention to the plastic waste issue in Jenjarom.

“When we used a drone to film, we realised that the factories can be very big, with huge piles of plastic waste. In one night, they can burn up to 50 tonnes of plastic.”

Through the assistance of Peka and Greenpeace, the issue of imported plastic waste got the attention of international and local media and the public outcry eventually led to the closure of the illegal factory operators.

After this experience, Pua realised that they have to give up the mindset that “the government will monitor illegal operators actively”.

Instead, the residents are the ones who seem to have to search for concrete evidence actively, and it is only then that the enforcement agencies will take action against the illegal operators.

Unpleasant fog covering the village

Pua is a chemical engineer who grew up in Jenjarom's new village. She studied in a Chinese primary school and in an independent school before she went to Taiwan for higher education.

She went to Taiwan in the 1990s, when Taiwan’s social movement was flourishing, but Pua said that “her world was smal, and she did not participate in any social movements”.

A few years later, when Pua came back to her hometown, she accidentally became involved in an environmental movement.

At the end of 2017, an unpleasant odour in the air became routine for residents of Jenjarom; children in the village started to suffer from respiratory diseases and had to go to the hospital often.

“There is fog coming over the village, but once I drive away from Jenjarom, there is none.”

“I feel like the air quality in Kuala Lumpur is much better.”

When Pua went to one of the factories which produced the stinky fog and smelled the scent of burning plastic coming from the factory’s chimney, she realised an imminent catastrophe was coming to the village: polluting industries were entrenched there.

Pua and the residents found that illegal factories were set up near residential areas. They even burnt non-recyclable plastic waste.

The residents went to the illegal dumping sites to inspect and found that most of the plastic waste came from the United States, England, France, Germany, Australia and other high-income countries.

A 2018 World Bank report highlighted that 90 percent of the wastes exported from high-income countries are openly burned or dumped in low and middle-income countries.

According to Greenpeace, this plastic waste was shipped to China previously and was processed and recycled in the country. Since China banned the import of plastic waste in January 2018, these plastics wastes were then transferred to Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Hence, tonnes of plastic wastes were shipped to Malaysia through the world’s 12th busiest port and Southeast Asia’s second-largest port - Port Klang.

Pua is worried that Jenjarom will tread in China’s “cancer villages” footsteps.

As one of the few residents who received higher education, Pua is aware that she has to utilise her knowledge in order to expose illegal recycling works going on in her village.

Hence, she and the former village chief Tan Ching Hin formed the Kuala Langat Environmental Action Association as a platform to organise the Jenjarom residents.

Through the association, they managed to raise funds for their movement, and residents became their ears and eyes by providing information on and the locations of illegal factories.

Victim or activist?

Upon me meeting her for the first time, Pua asked directly: “You want to describe me as an activist, or as a victim?”

Two years ago, when Jenjarom’s plastic waste issue first came to light, Pua represented the association to give a speech in a public forum.

During that time, she was not used to speaking to the media, she even asked a reporter after the event: “Can I stay anonymous?”

During the past two years, Pua was interviewed by more than 30 international and local media, she is now more familiar with how the media works and she even knows how to “cooperate” with the journalists to ensure Jenjarom’s environmental issue will not be neglected.

“At first, the Western media thought I am an environmentalist. I am not an environmentalist at all, I know nothing. I said I am a victim.

“When I started speaking, I did sound like a victim, but when I was outrageous and angry, I was like an activist. Now I know better how it operates.”

Then she repeated the same question: “You want to write an activist story or a victim story?”

When I reflected the question back to her, she became silent for a while, then she replied: “I hope you report that our country is in a dangerous stage.

"Our law system is incompetent in halting the smuggling of poisonous plastic wastes. There is no way to halt illegal factories.

"Our country does not have thorough environmental evaluation and enforcement actions, especially towards air pollution.”

While the monitoring system is imperfect, Pua strongly disagreed with the government’s decision to legalise recycling operators or issuing approving licences.

Although the international media describes her as a “hero”, she does not like how she was described.

“I did not know they would write in that way. In fact, I did not like it that way. I will be in a dangerous position.”

At the receiving end of threats

In July 2018, after the former Pakatan Harapan government halted several illegal recycling factories, an illegal operator warned Pua and other residents not to continue their movement,  warning “or else you will all be taken care of”.

In June 2019, Pua’s elder sister suffered a brazen red paint attack outside her house in Jenjarom and she believed this was a “warning” from illegal operators.

Besides death threats, Pua’s physical conditions deteriorated as she breathed in the toxic gases outside the recycling factories while she was gathering evidence. 

She described how she lost 1kg every month, her face became sunken and she could barely talk for more than five minutes.

“I could not sleep well at night, my brain kept thinking, sometimes I even woke up, thinking whether I should write a complaint letter to someone? Or maybe I should be braver and go out protesting?”

In fact, Pua never thought of moving out of her home and she can’t bear with her village being polluted by plastic waste.

“When my late father passed away, he had RM30,000, but all of the money was donated to the school.”

Growing up in this environment, Pua has a strong sense of protecting the next generation.

“I find it ironic. The Chinese are willing to donate to Chinese schools to build an auditorium hall, but when we are facing environmental harms, they choose to walk away and protect themselves.”

Fear of becoming a cancer village

Pua was asked by others not to talk to the media, in order to maintain the image of Jenjarom as a “Happy Village”.

Recalling the conversation, Pua angrily patted the table: “Hello, how can you compromise on air pollution? (If it is water pollution) I can avoid eating fish, but in terms of air pollution, can you not breathe?”

According to Greenpeace’s report, burning plastic wastes will release toxic chemical gases, which will damage the nervous system, disrupt the endocrine system, cause respiratory diseases, affect the reproductive system and so on.

But Pua did not dare let her family and neighbours find out about this report.

“I am worried that people around me might be depressed. When people know there is a problem but they can’t do anything about it, they will fall sick.”

“My falling sick is enough; I don’t want them to be sick too. There are other courageous residents who will support me.”

For her, this is an inevitable chemical equation: the existence of illegal factories will definitely cause harm to the residents.

“If we don't stand up and fight, there will be more illegal factories in the community. Can we still live here?”

“Having a cancer patient in one family is considered a problem. I have hundreds of relatives in the village, if it becomes a cancer village, what is there to live for?

“I was forced to do that (this movement against the illegal factories). Do you understand? I thought the village was being demolished.”

'Report every operator that comes in'

In November 2019, Kuala Langat Environmental Action Association was awarded a civil society award by the KL Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. Jenjarom’s air became cleaner, but for the residents, the movement has not yet ended as illegal operators resumed to operate quietly in the community.

Every weekend, Pua will be meeting international media and tell them how their exported plastic waste harms our environment.

Residents from other villages from around Malaysia also reached out to the association in order to get advice on how to protect their hometowns.

As the smuggling of plastic waste resumed, the residents felt powerless against the tide.

When they begin to feel disappointed, Pua will encourage them: “It’s okay, you see at least Jenjarom is getting better.

“You guys did a great job. We have to open up our ears and eyes and report every illegal operator that comes in.”

Even with exposing many illegal operators, Pua remains upset that the residents are still on their own and that enforcement agencies do not take action proactively, nor cooperate with the residents’ on their reports.

Pua is determined that she will not be defeated by the illegal plastic waste operators.

“We will chase them until they can’t have a stand. Even the licenced operators, we are able to find evidence of them polluting the air.

“I am not a noblewoman, but there is a strong sense of crisis pushing me… I simply know that if I don’t stand up, the whole village will be ruined. And this will pass to the whole nation, eventually.”