The 64 tons of smelly plastic waste confiscated earlier this month at Phnom Penh’s So Nguon dry dock were transported back to China Thursday morning, officials said.
“We must force the company to remove this [waste] from our country as soon as possible, because our environmental laws do not permit this waste to be imported to Cambodia,” Lonh Hell, deputy chief of the pollution control department of the Ministry of Environment, said on Thursday.
All five shipping containers full of the waste left the dock on Thursday with assurances from the Sepakeut Import-Export Co that it would be returned to Shanghai, China, via Sihanoukville, Lonh Hell said.
The plastic was seized on Sept 17 and three employees of Sepakeut, the Cambodian company that was transporting the waste, were arrested and later charged with polluting the environment. The employees—Ing Bunheng, Sim Meang and Lach Tharo—are being detained in Prey Sar prison awaiting trial.
“In accordance with the environmental law we will fine [the company], but we will have to wait for the case to go to trial to determine how large the fine will be,” Lonh Hell said. “First, we must get the waste out of Cambodia.”
However, a Tunisian company has claimed that the waste was harmless, legal and a boon for Cambodia’s economy.
Chay Mong Ung of the Sacadim company, based in Megrine, Tunisia, claimed in a letter published in Cambodge Soir on Sept 25 that the waste originated with Sacadim, was bought by a Chinese company and was then sent to Cambodia for pre-recycling treatment.
The waste consisted of high-density polyethylene that “must have been gathered from collection centers or community waste in Tunisia, and had undergone the required Tunisian and Chinese customs inspections upon its departure from Tunisia,” the letter states.
“It did not in any way constitute chemical waste or present toxic risks,” the letter states.
Because of the low cost of Cambodian labor, the Chinese China-Base Ningbo company sent the waste here for sorting, washing, drying and conditioning, after which it was to go back to China for final recycling, according to the letter. The letter states that the containers’ contents—“plastic scrap (in bulk)”—were declared to Cambodian Customs.
Keo Vanthon, deputy chief of Cambodia’s economic police, insisted the waste was a pollution risk. “It would have affected public health if we didn’t crack down on it in time,” he said, acknowledging that the seized plastic was not “toxic waste or radioactive material.”
(Additional reporting by Molly Ball)
