WWF report now ranks Malaysia as top ocean polluter in Asia

The latest report by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has now ranked Malaysia as the biggest consumer of plastic packaging in Asia.
The WWF report looks at the use of plastic packaging in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, which contribute 60% of the estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic that enter the world’s oceans each year.
WWF predicts that the volume of plastic waste thrown into the ocean is set to quadruple from 2010 to 2050, which literally means that the sea will have more plastics than fishes by 2050, unless serious measures are taken to overcome this.
Malaysia ranked highest among the 6 countries analysed in terms of annual per capita plastic packaging consumption, at about 16.8kg per person, followed by Thailand at 15.5kg.
Thomas Schuldt, WWF’s coordinator of work on a plastic circular economy, said Malaysians consumed the most plastic because they are among the wealthiest. He said, “There are lots of food delivery, which is plastic packaging-heavy apart from a lot of day-to-day products in plastic packaging bought at supermarkets.”
Schuldt urged Malaysia and other Asian governments to introduce regulation to limit single-use plastics. He called on Malaysia to also work with businesses and green groups to introduce a system encouraging consumer goods firms to use less plastic packaging and fund better recycling schemes, as more than 30 other countries have done, including in Asia.
In 2019, the government launched the Malaysia Plastics Pact to start a public debate on how to improve recycling, and its findings are likely to be released in March, added Schuldt.