Garbage and Waste Management -

This was my comment on Tun Mahathir's blog http://test.chedet.com/che_det/2008/11/snippets-18.html

It was posted a few minutes ago...

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Assalamualaikum Tun,

Your comment about garbage disposal and recycling issues got me to register and put in my first comment. I have been your loyal reader since this blog started.

RECYCLING..

Now I know why we are so obsessed by the 3 colorful recycling garbage bins. We are copying it from the British..
However, I think there are simpler way to promote recycling in Malaysia. This was based on my experience in the land of Uncle Sam in the 1990s.

Then, outside each house, there are just two type of bins - the blue and the "other color", usually green.

In the blue bins we could put any recycled items - paper, bottles, plastics, etc. Anything, as long as it is recycled.

Putting in mind that the recycled goods do have values, we should let the garbage collectors do their job. After all, they are the one who got the (extra) money

Now, I lived in a low-medium cost apartment in PJ where people don't care too much about recycling.
What I experimented was putting all recycled items in one plastic bag, and the other garbage in the other bags.
I put the normal garbage in the huge garbage bin outside the apartment.
I put the plastic bag that contains all the recyclables on the floor, outside the bin.
Within 30 minutes, the recycled items are gone.

So why bother to put in huge sums of govt money to purchase the multi-colored garbage bins if the "market forces" can just do that for you for free?

We just need to educate people to put the recyclables next to their usual garbage bin. The recycled-items collectors will clean it up for them.

GARBAGES

One of the ways to minimize the garbage at landfills/incinerators is by transferring it into different "system". Again, from my experience with "Uncle Sam", we should encourage our people to use the centralized sewer management.
All biodegradable items should be flushed out from the kitchen sink into the kitchen. No more putting your "nasi basi" into the plastic bag and dumping into the garbage bin.
Just flush it into the kitchen sink, and if necessary promote the introduction of garbage disposal blades at the kitchen sink to chop the wastes such as chicken bones into tiny pieces so that it could not block the sink cavity or the sewer..

Only items that are not easily flushed out such as hard bones etc that needs to be thrown into the garbage bin.

Once this items landed into our sewer collection plant, we got a better control of disposing it. There are numerous technology to convert this human wastes into other products.

Anyway, similar to you, I also feel the the incinerator issues has been blown our of proportion.. -- which makes the project got blown into pieces --

But to be "sensitive" to the feeling of others, why just put these incinerators on top of the already closed landfills. Since the landfills have been perceived as already "contaminated", a little bit of additional contamination should not matter, isn't it?...

my two sen...