Research officer S. Mageswari said SAM was told by the Department of the Environment (DoE) that the company had been ordered in April to return the wastes but had yet to do so.
The company, ResourceCo Asia, produces alternative fuel using industrial waste and treated municipal waste as a replacement for coal in the cement industry.
Environmentalists said the company had illegally imported solid wastes including non-recyclable items, such as used fabric, laminated paper, rejected plastics, car carpets and aluminum foil packaging for food brands.
Mageswari said the banned items were being stored in four separate storage facilities at Kawasan Perusahaan IGB, according to NST Online.
However, the company, ResourceCo Asia, said it had complied with the DoE order since July. Its general manager, K. Muralindran, was quoted as saying it had been ordered to return some 7,000 tonnes of waste material, some of which was en route to Malaysia, the order arrived and was being kept at Port Klang.
“We have been asked to come up with a timeline for sending it back to Australia,” he said. “We are in talks with the DoE and (are) in the midst of fulfilling a list of their requirements. As a result, we are only running on 20% capacity, relying on what local suppliers can give us,”
SAM has accused the company of having illegally imported solid waste by falsely declaring it to be solid fuel. Mageswari said Malaysia restricted the import of hazardous wastes and other wastes for recovery.
The environmental group intends to take the matter up with the Customs department and the Australian high commission.
ResourceCo’s Muralindran said the alternative fuel technology was new in Malaysia. “We are the first such plant in Asia Pacific and being the pioneer, we had anticipated certain challenges.” He said 97 percent of the materials used were converted into fuel, the report said.
He said the cement industry was moving away from the use of coal to fire their kilns because coal is a non-renewable resource, which produces a tonne of carbon dioxide for every tonne of coal burnt.
His company brought in raw materials from Australia as municipal waste was not separated at source in Malaysia until recently, and only in certain states.
“We need combustible materials to be turned into fuel. It is not as simple as taking garbage and grinding them up,” he was quoted as saying.