Pua Lay Peng received death threats and had her home splashed with red paint and her work and life disrupted. She was accused of having nothing better to do by the authorities. All this in the name of protecting her home in Jenjarom from unlicensed plastic recyclers.
These illegal operators were turning the area into a toxic cauldron of pollution, whose modus operandi was to set up ad-hoc factories in quiet areas, contaminate the groundwater as they process plastic waste, and illegally dump or burn whatever they couldn’t recycle in the dead of night.
To mark ‘Plastic Free July’, BFM speaks to this accidental activist about how she and other like-minded folks exposed this practice and how they continue to fight the problem, which has spread across Malaysia like a deadly cancer.
Produced and presented by: Juliet Jacobs
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