Malaysia Is 8th Worst In The World For Plastic Waste

“Please let’s waste less plastic.”

That was the quiet plea made one evening by my 10-year-old son.

I was somewhat surprised. We avoid single-use plastics and always use our own shopping
bags.

My children have long stopped using plastic straws, persuaded by a video of a turtle with a
nose bloodied from a straw stuck right up its nostril.

Yet his concern was understandable and well-founded, and prompted me to write this
column.

We have a huge problem with plastic waste on this planet. It’s everywhere. You’d have to be
blind not to see it. Empty drink packets on the streets. Plastic bags and Styrofoam food
packets in the park. Beaches that look like rubbish dumps, with waste strewn all over.

Apart from the fact that it is simply disgusting, displaying our careless disregard for the
environment, the problem has wide repercussions – literally.

There is a global crisis in plastic waste. And we Malaysians – yes, us – are major
contributors to it.

According to a 2015 study in Science Magazine, Malaysia is the eighth worst country
worldwide for plastic waste.

The study, which named China, Indonesia and the Philippines as the top polluters, estimated
Malaysia produced almost one million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste (waste not
recycled or properly disposed of) in 2010.

Some of our waste ends up in the oceans, poisoning and choking marine life and sea birds;
some may become part of one of the big “islands” of accumulated plastic waste. The Great
Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be bigger than the size of France. According to
National Geographic magazine, scientists gathered 750,000 bits of plastic in 1sq km of that
patch.

During the search for wreckage of the missing airliner MH370, investigators were constantly
confounded by false leads that turned out to be junk.

There will soon be more plastic than fish in the sea, according to scientists. I wouldn’t be
surprised if that’s already the case in our local seas.
A recent video of a diver in Bali swimming in a sea of trash provided shocking proof of the
extent of regional marine trash. Last year, Bali declared a “garbage emergency”; the clean-
up of beaches yielded 100 tonnes of rubbish on some days.

Earlier this month, some 500 people, led by Reef Check Malaysia, cleaned up 15 Malaysian
beaches. On Pulau Tioman, this extended to all villages. Volunteers collected nearly 14,000
plastic bottles, 6,200 plastic bags and 1,700 straws from the effort.

Plastic waste is not just an eyesore; there’s a far more menacing consequence.

Plastic doesn’t really degrade. It could be there for hundreds of years. And if it does
degrade, it breaks down to microscopic particles that may then be ingested by fish, which we
then eat, along with any pollutants absorbed by that plastic. In short, there is serious bad
karma from plastic – everything that we waste eventually comes back to us, sometimes right
in our mouths. And yes, some of this stuff is poisonous.

Given such facts, it’s shocking that there was a pledge recently in a political party manifesto
for free plastic bags in Selangor. We need radical solutions to curb plastic use rather than
allow free, unrestricted use!

It may be inconceivable for us to imagine life without plastic bags, but in fact, some countries
– including several in Africa – have banned plastic bags entirely, or almost entirely.

Bangladesh instituted a ban in 2002 after it was found that major floods were caused by
plastic bag litter caught in waterways and the sewerage system. Mauritania banned plastic
bags because cattle were getting sick from eating them.

Many other governments have taken action to reduce single-use plastic bags. In many
western European countries, there is a charge for bags, which has led to consumers
bringing their own bags. Some German shops only sell reusable bags.

Bags, though, are just a part of the problem. Ultimately, we need to tackle the enormous
problem of plastic waste. That’s a huge, complicated business requiring change on many
levels of societies (including consumers) – something for another column.

Yet I should add this: Change is possible, as seen in some European countries.

In Germany, some 98.5% of refillable plastic bottles are collected for recycling or re-use.
Glass beer bottles are also re-used. How do they manage that? A little financial incentive
helps: a Pfand (deposit money) is added to the bottle price, which you get back when you
return the bottle to the shop. It’s just 25 cents (about RM1) per plastic bottle, but alongside a
general consciousness about recycling, that’s enough to ensure a habit.
With the escalating amount of waste generated in urban areas, we need to come up with
such solutions soon. In the meantime, we can consider what we as individuals can do. So
please, let’s waste less plastic.

March 25, 2018, The Star

By Mangai Balasegaram

https://www.star2.com/living/2018/03/25/plastic-waste-pollution/
Innovation In Waste Management

Anaerobic digestion

Anaerobic digestion came about as the result of a long process of people searching for the
best way to deal with biowaste. Even before awareness of climate change made us realize
landfill was not the right home for our organic waste, we had problems with leachate and
gas. So, early technologies found ways to convert organic waste into compost and fertilizer
instead. This process was completed on open air windrows until odour became a problem
and ‘in-vessel’ composting plants were developed.

Anaerobic digestion is the latest and greatest process of in-vessel treatment of waste, and is
generally considered to be one of the most innovative and useful technologies developed by
our industry in recent years. Not only does it give us a large-scale solution to our organic
waste but it allows us to turns the resulting gases into energy.

The process, put simply, is the degradation of waste by microorganisms in an environment

starved of oxygen. It can be used to treat organic solid waste and wastewater of almost any
kind. The process works quickly and the remainder can be used as fertilizer while the biogas
produced is converted into energy.

As people will always produce biowaste, whether it be food or sewage, anaerobic digestion
is seen not only as a waste management process but also as a source of renewable energy.

Waste to energy

Waste to energy Waste to energy (WTE), sometimes known as energy from waste (EfW)
has seen some of the most interesting developments in the industry, as it has the advantage
of being able to completely remove waste, rather than reuse or process it.

Traditionally, WTE plants have operated by incinerating waste and converting the resulting
heat into energy – and most plants still use this technology today. But public opposition to
incinerators, which are often seen as dangerous and noisy has meant new types of WTE –
such as gasification, pyrolysis, thermal depolymerization and plasma arc gasification – have
been developed and are leading the way forward in this area.

Gasification and plasma arc gasification are used to convert organic materials into a
synthetic gas (syngas) made up of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The gas is then burnt to
produce electricity and steam. A plasma gasification plant uses plasma torches which
operate at approximately the same temperature as the surface of the sun (yes really!) to
create an environment in which solid or liquid waste is turned into syngas. The process
breaks down the molecular bonds of the waste and leaves it in elemental components. This
syngas is then converted to energy, and the waste completely disappears.

Zero waste

‘Zero Waste’ is a philosophy, rather than a process or technology, but it certainly can be
considered an innovation. The Zero Waste International Alliance define it as this: ‘Zero
Waste is a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in
changing their lifestyles and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all
discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use.

‘Zero Waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid
and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all
resources, and not burn or bury them. Implementing Zero Waste will eliminate all discharges
to land, water or air that are a threat to planetary, human, animal or plant health.’

The idea of reusing every bit of waste possible and turning the remainder into energy is a
commendable and sustainable system of waste management, which could solve many of the
world’s environmental problems. When one considers the way waste is managed worldwide
currently, however, it starts to sound like an unrealistic fantasy. It is hard to know where to
begin when implementing this kind of system. Yet there are towns, regions and countries
which have given us all an example of how things should be done.

Scotland is one such place. Authorities announced plans to work towards Zero Waste in
2008, and the target to achieve the goal is 2025. Zero Waste can also be implemented by
individual companies and organizations; the Zero Waste Alliance list Xerox Corp (Rochester,
New York), Hewlett Packard (Roseland, California), Fetzer Vineyards (Hopland, California),
Epson Portland Inc (Hillsboro, Oregon), Collins & Aikman (Dalton, Georgia) as companies
that have committed to this path.

Ron Wainberg, the national president of the Waste Management Association of Australia,
said in recent interview with Waste Management World. ‘The ISWA meeting during the last
Annual Congress debating the ‘Zero Waste Concept’ showed [a] change in attitude. Most
people will accept there will always be waste in society and the concept of zero waste is
more about not wasting the value of the waste.’ This shows that Zero Waste is a question of
changing attitudes, and taking responsibility for the waste that we produce by making sure it
is reused, recycled, resold or turned into energy. We can’t stop producing it altogether but
we can make sure we deal with it in the best ways possible.

The best thing about Zero Waste is that by working to it people stretch the boundaries of
their imaginations. By aiming high they create an environment in which innovation abounds.
Extended producer responsibility (WEEE)

The WEEE issue is one of the greatest challenges facing the waste industry today. We know
that when it comes to expensive, electrical equipment, repair is better than disposal. The
toxicity and complexity of these types of product make them notoriously difficult to recycle,
and sadly the rate of production is far greater than our ability or willingness to recycle them.
The result? A violation of human rights, with the developed world sending piles of WEEE to
developing countries to be dumped.

Clearly, this is a practice which must be controlled and stopped, but with many of these
shipments being sent illegally it is very difficult to monitor the numbers involved.

One solution which seems to be providing part of the answer to this problem is Extended
Producer Responsibility, sometimes known as ‘Product Stewardship’. Governments and
authorities have begun introducing policies which hold the manufacturers of electrical and
electronic equipment responsible for managing their ‘end of life’ products when people have
finished using them. And sometimes companies are opting to do this voluntarily. While this
does not give us a way to deal with the mountains of WEEE piling up in Asian and African
countries, it does look at the problem from a prevention angle which will surely be beneficial
in the longer term.

Extended producer responsibility takes the onus for finding effective ways to reuse and
recycle the components of electrical and electronic goods off waste management companies
and puts it back on the producers themselves. This is an infinitely more sensible solution as
manufacturers are able to recycle separate parts and use them to build new products of the
same type, or more easily create a system to achieve this.

Companies participating in these schemes use methods such as reuse, buy-back or

recycling programmes. They also sometimes pay separate organizations to deal with their
waste.

Waste to fuel

Given the oil crisis and the ever-increasing price of fossil fuel, turning waste into fuel is a
fantastic solution. Biofuel is the most common form, and the term encompasses a range of
different fuels derived from organic matter, including biowaste. Biofuel can be solid, liquid or
gas and be used to power vehicles or used to enhance other types of fuel. Biogas – a
product of anaerobic digestion – and syngas – which is produced during gasification – are
both types of biofuel.
Landfill gas also has an up-and-coming role in this field. Most landfill-gas-to-energy projects
involve turning otherwise harmful emissions into electricity to power homes. But it is also
being increasingly used as a vehicle fuel or as a substitute for mains household gas supply.

Sorting technology

People will always, either through ignorance or carelessness, throw their waste in the wrong
bin every now and then. So, however good our separate collection schemes may be – and
let us remember that it is not always practical to have them in place; we need a way to take
a mixed waste stream and divide into reusable, separate waste streams. Enter one of the
greatest innovations in waste technology – the sorter.

Sorting technology comes in many guises, from water-based technologies such as ArrowBio
which separates the organic fraction from recyclables, to the whirring, whizzing, sorting
machines we see at trade shows every year.

When mixed waste is fed into a single stream recycling facility the process will include some
or all of these processes:

removal of larger items by hand separation of items by weight, which means metals, plastics,
paper, glass etc. are sorted from each other use of screens to separate items by size
Magnetic separation of metals, such as eddy current separators for aluminium ultraviolet
optical scanners (Near Infra-red and Medium Infra-red) combined with targeted air jets that
send items of certain types in separate collection bins e.g. PET and non PET plastics

Many companies have done brilliant work in this field over the past few years, leading the
way in the development and manufacture of these types of technologies. One example is
France-based Pellenc ST which has recently launched a new MIR (Medium Infra-red) sorter
which sorts paper according to its quality, and has improved its NIR (Near Infra-red) system
to sort wood into category A and category B.

Pellenc ST is working on a research project in partnership with OSEO dedicated to the

development of new machines and sorting technologies worth over 18 million euro (US
$24.5 million). So we can expect to see even greater things in future.

Claudine C. (2010). Innovation In Waste. Retrieved 1 September 2018.

https://waste-management-world.com/a/1-innovations-in-waste