Note #59 : Waste Management in Malaysia

In the name of Allah the most everything

Even tho the title seems a serious one, i am not going to write like a lecture notes or a text book. This is a sharing of my little knowledge about waste management in this country. 

I was a Chemistry student, I am an Environmental Studies student now. In both field, i had chances to visit the sanitary landfill. One was in Mambong, Sarawak, under the management of Trinekens, and the recent one was at Bukit Tagar, operated by KUB-Berjaya Enviro Sdn. Bhd. 

Both landfills are level-4 landfill (they have leachate treatment facilities). To compare both landfills, one obvious different was the odor. In Mamboeng, we went close to the waste dumping area, it smells horrible, but in Bukit Tagar, there's very little odor. I was told that the little odor comes from the burning of incinerator, and it is not that disturbing.

I can't recall much about my visit to Mambong's landfill, so let's focus more on Bkt Tagar. In Bukit Tagar they plan to operate up to 17 phase. For now, there are less than 10 in operation. According to the in-charged engineer, the landfill possibly not gonna reached up to the 17th phase, because they will do the landfill-mining, and reuse the once closed-phase for new dumping. The mining can recover items for recycle purposes. By this, the landfill will not be closed, but can forever operating. The rest of untouched places can be use for palm plantation and get money.

Recovering recyclable materials by landfill mining are better than having Material Recovery Facilities (MRF). MRF works by separating the materials at the beginning of the waste being dumped, usually. It costs a lot and need labor to do the 'dirty' works. Dealing with 'dirty' works always have risks. Not many people want to do it, and employers have extra burden to ensure the safety of their workers. Landfill mining can recover the items with not much effort to clean it. During the closure, bacterias has done their part in cleaning the material, digesting organics and leave it clean. Once you take up the plastic bag for example, you can just blow it with air and there, it's ready to be recycle. CLEAN.

Bukit Tagar actually generate their own electricity from their activities. They even sell part of it to the Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB). Bkt Tagar was blessed with a lot of clays. So they don't have to buy clays from other for the landfill lining system. The hole they dig to fill the wastes, they use it again as liner. Bkt Tagar also practice waste to zero policy. Water from leachate treatment are not release to the water stream, instead, are used to water the plants in surrounding area with automated sprinkler. 

The geography of this place is good. Surrounded by hills and rich with clays, away from residential areas with huge buffer zone of 500m. Inside the landfill there is no bad odors, of course outside, there are none at all. Bkt Tagar was very well engineered. I bet this is what you get by combining brilliant heads together. These engineers are actually getting invitation from other countries to operate landfills there. Can you see that some Malaysian are actually live up to the Malaysia Boleh Slogan. I am so proud of this.

Even though we have a well engineered waste management (of course not applied throughout the nation), but our mind setting is still very old. Some of us are not aware about waste problem or how handle individual waste to help with waste problem in this country. In this issue. I am disappointed.

There are still things i need to say, but not included here. Will do in other entry. When i wrote things like this, i hope people will read and get something. Thank you so much for reading this long entry.