I'm Leana Josea. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. And for this week's

assignment, I'm in Malaysia, a global hub for plastic waste imports and recycling. But how clean

and safe is the trade and how much plastic can actually be recycled?

You want to take a photo, you can take home. Now use your eyes to check first. Any worker surrounding, okay, I saw one worker. I'm on a civil

I'm on a surveillance mission of plastic recycling factories

in an industrial area of Selangor in Malaysia with Puay-Peng.

So we need to keep a low profile.

There's a CCTV.

You need to know how to avoid them.

Do I need to lower my microphones?

Yes, of course.

Pouar is a petite, softly spoken woman in her early 50s, but don't let that deceive you.

She's a force to be reckoned with and is nicknamed the Erin Brokovich of Malaysia.

Brokevich being the American environmental activist who successfully sued a utility company

and was the subject of an Oscar-winning Hollywood film in the year 2000, starring Julia Roberts.

Poir is trying to stem the tide of foreign plastic waste sent here,

supposedly all for recycling,

but the government has had to return tons of non-recyclable waste back to their countries of origin,

including France, the UK, the USA and others.

But the illegal waste just keeps coming.

So the problem is since China announced there were ban waste import. Since then,

we are attacked by the import waste from developed countries like Europe, UK, American,

...