Strategies For Effective Waste Management And Recycling In Malaysia Essay.

Overview of Waste Management Issues

Question:

Discuss about the Waste Management for Environmental and Socio Economic.
 

The awareness towards cleanliness, the responsibility to manage waste properly and build public concern for the recycling management have become a serious issue. This issue has grabbed the attention in the developed countries. The options of recycling must be implemented only after assessing the health, environmental and socio-economic as well as operational risks (Ghiani, Laganà and Manni 2012). The various strategies to manage the growing wastes are:

1. Maximization of recycling services will enhance the amount of waste collection to recycle. It can be collected from kerbside collection, recycling cernters as well as community recycling pints. This will divert a arge portion of landfill.
2. The modern facilities to treat the mixed waste must be utilized. These recycler machines sort the mixed wastes, extract additional recyclable objects and reduce the amount of waste. Therefore, the expansion of waste materials to recycle will be growing and people participation will be increased.
3. The kerbside collections, where people access to individual bins must be replaced by recycling collections. The effort must be given in increasing the number of recycling points in the places of communal collection systems.
4. The shopkeepers in the super markets must be concerned about the unsellable wastes those are produced by them. The vegetable lefts and the waste products from fish, meat and other can be recycled in a prudent way. Finally, if possible they must bring the waste into life (Singh, Laurenti and Frostell 2014). For example, seeds of rotten vegetables can be converted into plants.
5. As humans are the chief reason of waste production, the management is also their responsibility. The public awareness is the most important aspect in management of waste. Only the active public participation can reduce the problem. Public awareness is necessary because if left unmanaged, the wastes can be an issue of life ad death. This awareness can be introduced in school and college level education as it has been proved the most effective method to create awareness. The waste education should be mandatory for all the students. In spreading awareness among the adult people, the education strategy of waste less and recycle more can be a prospective aspect. The government agencies, local government, and community organizations must take initiatives to spread awareness among the Malaysians.
6. Digital campaigning can be a choice in creating awareness. 90% retail brands and 50% shoppers purchase on the recommendation from social media. Therefore, it can make aware the people about the methods and services and recycling programs. Beside these, the digital and print media can penetrate those sections where the social media have no access or popularity.

The fundamental problem of waste management includes the people attitude. Previously, the waste management issues have been considered as environmental problem. The management of household wasted has been considered from the socio-cultural beliefs (Dhokhikah and Trihadiningrum 2012). Therefore, the communication through the help of broadcast media has become imperative to bring change in popular beliefs and behavior. This communication enables to increase public awareness in preventing and recycling the wastes (Badgie et al. 2012). Malaysia has been one of the least bothered countries having environmental awareness. The broadcast media can create awareness among the residents and educate them to manage help the household refuse and hazards of ill disposal. This knowledge must be supported by their will.

Environmental education can be spread through different media like TV and radio. TV has its audio-visual advantages that easily penetrate the people and leave a long lasting impact on their minds (Kiddee, Naidu and Wong 2013). It can reach diverse population and demonstrate the messages through pictures and videos. Due to heavy dependency and exposure associated with the digital media, it is easy to cover vast geographical area in low expense. Moreover, radio jingles and TV commercials can reach to even the illiterate and aged people.

The print media can access the population who do not have opportunity to visualize a video on TV. In newspapers and magazines, the elected members can conduct inductions on waste management issues and give briefs. The local print media can give advertisements on door-to-door visit program and road shows arranged by the government (White, Dranke and Hindle 2012). The news bulletins, public service statements and commercials can increase the awareness among people.

The social media like Facebook, Twitter are useful tool for the waste management companies and Malaysian government (Johari 2012). It offers a popular platform to campaign and tell the story or methods of service provided. The service providers can organize their simple strategies to reach the prospective clients and commoners as well as communities. The social media can attract more internet using people and make them understand the necessity of waste management. If the provider has a lot of pictures and videos as documentaries, they can avail the service of Instagram and Youtube (Ingham 2012). Facebook and Instagram make possible the direct contact with people. They must update the pages created over internet and keep the information updated regularly. The waste management providers must follow others to get inspired for adoption and bring innovation to their service. Public relation over social media a necessary step where the followers of the page so that they can give feedbacks and respond to the contents.  

Importance of Media Campaigns

Various on ground campaigns like Green show campaign and zero waste campaign can be conducted. According to the public relation theories, only an integrated method of public relations can develop communication programs for changing public perspective and spread awareness more easily. The direct connection techniques can be conducted by distributing leaflets, calendars collecting information, canvassing, arranging road shows, community meetings and displaying posters in those meetings (Wmam.org, 2017). The government authorities must visit the locals and canvass for the proper disposal of the wastes. The restaurant authorities and shopkeepers must be encouraged to recycle their vegetable wastes. Most of the vegetable vendors of Malaysia can access garden therefore, they can be funded to increase plantation from the waste fruits and vegetables. They can use these also in their garden as natural manure. These can maximize the opportunities to hit the targeted audiences by delivering the messages through the different methods and increase the overall effect of communications. In most of the developed countries, the concern has become to reuse the waste materials. To them nothing in the world is waste but it is the right materials abandoned in wrong place. The benefits of reusing the waste products are social, economical and most importantly environmental. Therefore, in Malaysia, the public should be encouraged to reuse the waste products in their families and locality. On the government’s part, the waste collection and proper disposal are vital. They should make the signs on the bins legible including proper instructions and recognizable icons as well as pictures. These will help those common people having problems in reading or cannot understand other languages except their mother tongue. The use of color can also solve this issue. These people must know the method of proper disposal. the method of sorting of organic or biodegradable wastes to a different bin and inorganic waste materials into another. The opportunity of using recycle electrical must be made available all the times. The providers can follow other campaigning mottos of different countries. For example, England introduced a campaign to bring instead of bin the wastes.

Table 1: Research Time Table

(Source: Self-Made)

References:

Badgie, D., Samah, M.A.A., Manaf, L.A. and Muda, A.B., 2012. Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Composition in Malaysia: Management, Practice, and Challenges. Polish Journal of Environmental Studies, 21(3).

Dhokhikah, Y. and Trihadiningrum, Y., 2012. Solid waste management in Asian developing countries: challenges and opportunities.

Ghiani, G., Laganà, D., and Manni, E. 2012. Capacitated location of collection sites in an urban waste management system. Waste management, 32(7), pp.1291-1296.

Ingham, D., Bejan, A., Mamut, E. and Pop, I. eds., 2012. Emerging technologies and techniques in porous media (Vol. 134). Springer Science & Business Media.

Johari, A., Ahmed, S.I., Hashim, H., Alkali, H. and Ramli, M., 2012. Economic and environmental benefits of landfill gas from municipal solid waste in Malaysia. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 16(5), pp.2907-2912.

Kiddee, P., Naidu, R. and Wong, M.H., 2013. Electronic waste management approaches: An overview. Waste Management, 33(5), pp.1237-1250.

Singh, J., Laurenti, R., and Frostell, B., 2014. Progress and challenges to the global waste management system. Waste Management & Research, 32(9), pp.800-812.

Thi, N.B.D., Kumar, G. and Lin, C.Y., 2015. An overview of food waste management in developing countries: current status and future perspective. Journal of environmental management, 157, pp.220-229.

White, P., Dranke, M. and Hindle, P., 2012. Integrated solid waste management: a lifecycle inventory. Springer Science & Business Media.

Wmam.org. (2017). WMAM. [online] Available at: https://www.wmam.org/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].