Malaysians generate 30,000 tonnes of garbage on average per day. Its recycling rate is only 5%.

The national Ministry of Urban Wellbeing, Housing, and Local Government recently released these two data, and they are already causing Malaysia severe problems. Solid Waste accumulation across the nation is causing severe air and land pollution for the environment. It happens too on community health issues, and economic growth constraints. When considered as a whole, poor Waste Management Malaysia is currently one of the largest problems in the country.

Local and federal administrations have been attempting for years to stop waste from flowing onto streets, into landfills, over hillsides, and via waterways, but Malaysia’s rapid rate of development has made that process incredibly challenging.

Population growth has caused consumption and waste rates to rise more quickly than Malaysia’s utilities can keep up. Municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Malaysia increased by more than 91% in the ten years from 2003 to 2013. Urbanization is largely to blame, with city dwellers in the nation (who make up 65% of the overall population) being the biggest producers of garbage. Malaysia has a lot of trash to cope with because of this. An urban culture that loves to buy and throw, and a notoriously uninformed populace about resource conservation and recycling.

As a result, landfills are receiving the majority of it. In Malaysia, 42 percent of all MSW was burned in 2013. Two percent was recycled, leaving 56 percent to be disposed of in landfills.

Ilegal dumping and open-air dumps

In Malaysia, open-air pit landfills make up the great bulk of facilities. This quick and dirty approach is inexpensive yet incredibly damaging to the environment. The problems with open-area landfills include disease transmission through birds, insects, and rodents, surface and groundwater contamination through leaching, soil contamination through direct contact, air pollution from garbage burning (intentional or not), uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases, and of course, a very unpleasant odour.

Although open-air landfills have the potential to be damaging, they are still significantly better than unregulated dumping, which is a significant problem for Waste Management Malaysia. Garbage services only reach around 66 percent of the population in rural areas, thus a lot of waste ends up littering the countryside. In the Cameron Islands, enormous heaps of illegally dumped trash have been pouring into rivers for years, making some of them unusable even after treatment. Recently, these piles have started to burn internally, melting hillsides and leaking toxic waste into the soil and water that the neighbourhood residents depend on for farming, fishing, and occasionally drinking water.

A disposable culture

The fact that Malaysia’s population suffers from a severe lack of environmental education and public awareness. It is a major contributing factor to the country’s trash problem. The lack of knowledge isn’t from a lack of effort. Starting from roughly 1988, years of awareness campaigns, public forums, and (very expensive) corporate responsibility initiatives have falling short. It due to a lack of support from the general public. There are some areas where recycling is strongly supported, and there are motivated people working to promote sustainability, but it seems that Malaysians as a whole have an ambivalent attitude toward conservation and recycling.

A 2001 drive by the Penang State government to persuade citizens to recycle at least 1% of the rubbish they produced each day. Recycling containers were offering, but they were mishandling, and it was discovering that 40–60% of the goods in the ones that were use were not recyclable.

Although recycling opportunities are numerous in Malaysia, they are currently being underutilised. Although more than half of Malaysia’s waste is recyclable (and the remainder is compostable). But its only around 95% of it is processing by landfills. 85 percent of these landfills are at capacity and will likely close within the next few years. Making problems worse, it is getting harder to construct new landfills in Malaysia as there is less land available and locals refuse to get permission. If nothing changes, Malaysia will be facing with a challenge that could undo years of advancement toward sustainability.

A New Waste Management Malaysia ‘s Policy

The only choice left to the Malaysian government is obligatory recycling with penalty for disobedience. Since 2007, programmes that distributing recycling bins and hope for the best have being initiating and abandoning, but they have been a complete failure due to public ignorance and disinterest. The government has again again rallied despite this. This time, recycling in Malaysia seems to be taken quite seriously.

Malaysia’s most current recycling law has just gone into effect in its entirety. The legislative Act, known as the Mandatory Waste Separation Program, aims to encourage Malaysians to separate recyclables from trash. The collectors will take care of the rest.

The regulations are straightforward: separate your trash into various bags to avoid fines. Glass, aluminium, and electronics go in a green bag, plastic goes in a white bag, and paper goes in a blue bag. Unuse home waste should be bagged and disposed of in the garbage cans that are providing by the haulers. If those regulations are broken, a RM1,000 ($230) fine would be issue. The fine is required until January 1, 2016, and recycling is required as of that date.

The public has receiving a thorough explanation of the initiative, claims Datuk Abdul Rahman Dahlan, Minister of Urban Wellbeing, Housing, and Local Government.

In July, he say, “I’m confident that with the different campaigns being launch, the public will be properly educate. He mention that the process to segregate household solid garbage is quick and basic.”

Rahman stated that the sorting programme might cut the amount of solid waste sent to landfills by 40% during the same event. Malaysia requires a recovery like this.

In short

Without teaching activities, it is hope that fines will elicit a response from the public. The assumption that financial penalties might be the key to encouraging sustainability in the public. This is supporting by the fact that education programmes about water conservation have not been well receiving by the general population. The success of the trash separation programme is still being reporting. Soon, the success of such programmes will determine the very future of the nation.

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