As
of the year of 2008, 23,000 tonnes of waste is produced each day in Malaysia,
with less than 5% of the waste is being recycled. In Selangor alone, waste
generated in 1997 was over 3000t/day and the amount of waste is expected to
rise up to 5700t/day in the year 2017(Yachio Engineering, 2000 cited in Muhd
Noor Muhd Yunus, 2000). An alarming 19% of waste ends up in our drains, which
then causes flash floods and drainage blockage. This situation has been and
will be reducing our environmental capacity to sustain life.
Solid
waste affects climate change through landfill methane emission. The source of
manmade methane gas is from the landfills themselves, which happens when
organic waste is left to decay anaerobically.
The
3Rs, reduce, reuse and recycle were introduced to help on this matter. The
no-plastic bag campaign is as one of the way to reduce the waste production.
But that does not close the loop. Where other recyclable waste does goes. Shall
we practice the reuse and recycle?
Those
are some questions we may need to consider before throwing away anything to our
bins. Let’s save our mother earth from get sinks with solid waste. I hope below
picture helps in giving some tips.
See
you soon in my next entries J
