MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS AND AWARENESS ON E-WASTE MANAGEMENT

Abstract

E-waste management is currently seen as an important environmental component and has received a worldwide attention. E-wastes in Malaysia are commonly disposed along with other domestic wastes at landfills, thus has caused a major concern amongst the public and the government. This method has been practiced in many developing countries which lack the proper disposal method of e-waste. A study was conducted in Skudai, Johor to analyze the level of awareness of Material Flow Analysis (MFA) among the public and retailers, as well as their views on current e-waste management from different aspects. The primary data was obtained through interview and questionnaire distribution. The sets of questionnaires that were distributed to public, computer retailers and hand-phone retailers were 200, 21 and 26, respectively. The analysis was done by using Microsoft Excel and SPSS software. The result shows that the level of awareness among public, computer retailers and hand-phone retailers was low where the percentages who did not know about MFA were 52, 76 and 77 percent, respectively. The study found that demographic background did not affect willingness to recycle and reduce e-wastes. However, from the correlation analysis, it shows that there are significant correlation between interest of respondents toward environmental activities and willingness to practice MFA for both computer retailers and hand-phone retailers where p <0.05 at significant level of 95%. Spearman’s rho correlation coefficient was used to determine the significant level. Then, linear regression analysis also shows that for public respondent, people who had joined environmental activities before tend to perform MFA on e-waste management with more information at significant level of 95% (p < 0.05). This study implies that more environmental campaign should be performed in order to increase general knowledge of MFA among the public. The results of this study will assist the Malaysian waste management authorities to plan the collecting system and facilities needed for management of e-waste generated in the near future.