Abstract
With the escalated increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in Malaysia reaching a shocking 38,000 ton/day in 2017, a sustainable waste management system is much desired. Nationwide, there are 176 landfills but only 8 are sanitary landfill with the rest are open dumpsites. In the campus of University of Malaya, UM Zero Waste Campaign (UM ZWC) was introduced in 2011 to start a long-term campaign to achieve an integrated and sustainable waste management model and ultimately a zero-waste campus. Since year 2015, UM ZWC is fully funded by Sustainability Science Research Cluster of UM (Susci) as one of the living labs of UM as well as by JPPHB under the RMK-11 budget. UM ZWC operating projects including in house composting center, food waste segregation scheme, research composting emission and waste characterization, anaerobic digestion (AD), used clothes collection program, wood waste separate collection, e-waste collection and drop-off recycling collection were initiated under the campaign. Since the inception of the project in 2011 until December 2017, almost over 620 tons of solid waste has been diverted from disposal in landfill with composting, AD, recycling, re-use and energy recovery. A roadmap of UM ZWC was drawn up in 2013, with a goal to achieve 60% landfill diversion by year 2040. In the next 5-10 years, UM ZWC plays a vital role to formalize the recycling collection in UM and further increase the organic waste recycling with green waste shredding and composting. Besides environmental benefits (pollution prevention and carbon emission reduction), UM ZWC brings various benefits such as academic research opportunities for UM, contribute in UM LCCF (Low carbon city framework) target and serve as platform to improve students soft skills and entrepreneur skill. Multi stakeholders participation, support form top management and industrial collaboration are the key factors that are able to drive the development of a sustainable waste management model in UM campus.
Highlights
Solid waste can be referred as unwanted waste is that derived from the animal and human activities
Food waste is a main component of municipal solid waste (MSW) which can lead to the emission of odorous compounds and can affect the quality of leachate from landfill and others
The complete /comprehensive data that UM Zero Waste Campaign (UM ZWC) fully possesses are food waste collected for composting or anaerobic digestion, green waste collected for composting, wood waste collected for energy recovery, waste textiles collected for reuse/recycle, E-waste collected at UM ZWC site for recycling/recovery, recyclable materials sorted at UM ZWC site and UM transfer station and residual waste disposal data
Summary
Solid waste can be referred as unwanted waste is that derived from the animal and human activities. Solid waste can be classified based on its contents including materials such as paper, plastics, glass, metal and organic waste. It can be categorized based on hazard potential incorporated with radioactive, flammable, toxic or non-toxic. While solid waste management is defined as discipline associated with control of generation, storage, collection, transportation, processing and disposal of solid waste materials in the best way to deal with the range of public health, conservation, economic and other environmental considerations. Lack of public conscientious in today’s modern lifestyle has resulted to increasing amount of waste generated and disposed at landfills especially when it comes to packaging, as these materials are dispensable to them [4].
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