Chapter 10 Sustainable Waste Management
Benefits
Goal
To reduce the amount of natural resources consumed, make sure that any materials that are taken from nature are reused as many times as possible and that the waste created is kept to a minimum.
Less landfill, more green jobs
More recycling, the bigger the recycling industry becomes.
More job opportunities for those in "green" industries and there is still plenty of room for growth.
The community prefer a new recycling plant over another landfill as landfill take up acres of land and smell can stretch for miles.
Keeping community safe
Recycling reduces the chances of air pollution and water contamination.
Dispose waste properly, separating and recycling waste can help prevent toxic gases and chemicals seep into air and water as well as keep community from infectious disease.
Save energy and our natural resources
Creating new items from recycled materials uses less energy throughout production.
Using recycled materials helps to prevent from having destroy natural resources in order to create raw materials.
The amount of trees and water one person or household can save is astounding when recycling becomes a regular practice.
To conserve materials, landfills competing for valuable land, and the health, environmental and aesthetic impacts of ineffective disposal methods.
Challenges for Malaysia
Considering that 16.76 million tons (or 45,900 tons/day) of waste (household waste: 70 percent; commercial waste: 30 percent) is expected to be generated by nearly 30 million Malaysians in the year 2020.
Enhancement by Malaysia
Privatise and centralise its solid waste management.
Standard hierarchy of waste management.
- Reuse
- Reduce
- Recycling
- Treatment
- Disposal
Malaysian Government continues to promote a more effective way of waste management by encouraging the reuse and reduce method and ultimately reducing landfill wastes.
Waste Management Technology in Malaysia
Provides INCENTIVE in form of investment tax allowance and income tax exemption for the purchase and use of green technology services and system.
Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation (SWCorp Malaysia)
To complement and ensure the successful implementation of the National Solid Waste Management Policy.
Provide a comprehensive, integrated, cost-effective and sustainable solid waste management system
The Corporation was established under the Solid Waste Management and Public Cleansing Corporation Act 2007 (Act 673) and commenced operation in June 1st 2008 under the purview of Ministry of Housing and Local Government (MHLG).
To administer and enforce solid waste and public cleansing management laws and matters related.
The response has been promising with 313 recycling projects approved with total investments of RM7.6 billion as at December 2018, mainly from the rubber products industry with investments of RM2.34 billion followed by basic metal products (RM1.97 billion) and plastic products (RM1.27 billion).
Aim of the incentive is to encourage firms to revise their approach by incorporating a combination of waste management techniques including collection, storage, composting and disposal with other core recycling, recovery or waste treatment activities
Landfill
Incinerator
Lacking of awarenness
The waste separation and recycling rate was only 24 per cent, while the remaining 76 per cent went to landfills
Due to unseparated waste, more than 30 percent potentially recyclable materials such as paper, plastic, aluminum and glass are still directly disposed of in landfills.
Insufficient technologies and facilities
Limited space for landfills and rising costs of disposal.
The ever increasing rate of waste generation has caused the current technologies such as landfilling unable to cope with
Currently the ultimate waste disposal method that can deal with many types of materials, most of the garbage ends on landfill sites.
Most landfills in the country are small scale operations with varying designs with addition poorly maintained.
Other disposal sites are the open dumpsites, where waste is illegally disposed of.
As reported by SWCorp Malaysia, there are several incinerators in the country with a capacity of 75 tons/day in total
A facility for construction and demolition waste is able to treat 500 tons per day
Organic waste is treated in collaboration with Kitakyushu City Hall, Japan (500 tons/year), in Malaysian food waste facilities (anaerobic digester: 1,500 kilograms/day) and composting plants (150 kilograms/day).
Malaysia’s first waste-to-energy (WTE) plant in Ladang Tanah Merah, Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan is estimated to be fully operated in June 2019 but has been another delay in completing the plant and it is targeted for completion next year.
Be able to handle 600 tonnes of mechanically-segregated and processed municipal solid waste per day, once it is completed.
This will produce between 20MW and 25MW of green energy, sufficient to power about 25,000 households in its vicinity.
click to edit