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And yet it has. Malaysia this week is demanding Canada pay to take back a shipping container filled to bursting with plastic grocery bags and packaging Malaysia says is too contaminated to be recycled.

This latest garbage embarrassment is shining new light on what Greenpeace Canada calls the “myth of recycling.”

“I think it is a shock to Canadians that we ship so much garbage overseas,” said Sarah King, head of Greenpeace Canada’s oceans and plastics campaign.

Environmental Defence program director Keith Brooks says most Canadians have no idea that after they dutifully drop their plastic packages and soda cans into blue bins, a lot of them still end up in landfills or burned in far-flung countries.

“The curtain has been pulled back or the wool’s been pulled off our eyes and we now see that ’Oh my gosh this is totally not working the way that we thought it was working’ and we are contributors to a big problem,” he said. “We are a global pariah as a result of exporting our contaminated plastic to less-developed countries. It’s shameful.”

After five years of negotiations with the Philippines, including attempts to convince the Philippine government to dispose of the garbage locally, Canada agreed earlier this month to take back dozens of the containers sent there in 2013 and 2014 and pay for the cost of shipping them. Last week it contracted a major global shipping company to handle the waste, which is to be taken to Vancouver and burned for energy at a plant in suburban Burnaby.