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CircularJourney

Southeast Asia — 2027

Malaysia

Malaysia became a major destination for internationally traded plastic scrap after China closed its doors in 2018, then moved to restrict it. That sequence makes it an unusually clear place to study what recycling capacity is actually for.
Research plannedOn the roadmap. Host organizations are being approached.

Research question

What does it take to build genuine processing capacity, rather than a destination for someone else lower-value material?

Written before the mission, and published unchanged. Findings are assessed against this question rather than the question being rewritten to fit the findings.

Research scope

Industrial recycling capacity and imported material

What we want to understand

  1. 01How the 2018 shift in global scrap trade changed domestic processing capacity.
  2. 02The difference in practice between a licensed processor and an unlicensed one.
  3. 03How industrial and commercial waste is handled compared with household waste.
  4. 04What enforcement of import restrictions looks like on the ground.
  5. 05Whether domestic feedstock can sustain the capacity that was built for imports.
Region
Southeast Asia
Research lens
02 · Peer countriesWhat are countries facing comparable challenges doing differently?
Research theme
Processing capacity, trade and industrial waste
Field research
Planned for 2027
Framework themes
recyclingindustrial wasteplastictechnologypolicyeconomicsindia applicability
Relevant SDGs
SDG 8SDG 9SDG 12

Cities

Malaysia

Kuala Lumpur

Municipal collection alongside a concentration of licensed and unlicensed plastic processing in the surrounding state.

Research planned

Missions

CJ-2027-MYResearch planned

Malaysia: capacity, trade and enforcement

A study of what recycling capacity is for, in a country that acquired a great deal of it very quickly and then changed the rules.

Reached: Travel (1/10)Mid 2027

Findings

No findings yet

Field research in Malaysia is research planned. This section stays empty until there is something we have actually seen. The questions above are what we will be asking.

What India could take from Malaysia

Assessment pending

Any judgement about transfer to India would be speculation until the system has been seen working, and its costs and dependencies understood. Anything published here will be labelled as a proposal until a pilot reports.

What Malaysia could take from India

Nothing has been researched yet, so nothing is claimed. These are the parts of India’s experience we expect to be worth putting in front of practitioners here, and what we will ask them about.

  • Informal recovery networks that capture material a formal system would landfill.
  • Low-capital sorting infrastructure built under tight municipal finance.

Read the reasoning on why this is a two-way journey.

Case studies

No case studies yet

Case studies are published from field research, with sources and limitations.

Film and clips

Notices

Organizations and experts

Directory not yet open

We list an organization only once it has agreed to a public listing, and a person only with their consent. Outreach for this mission is under way; entries appear here as permissions come back.Take part