Wednesday, June 13, 2012

The 3Rs, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle


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



1 comment:

  1. Dear SDM, I recently came across a group of young adults trying to make a difference in terms of sustainable living. This group are in the line of upcycling and have had even won a grant from British Council for their idea. I was wondering if you could spread the word for these young adults. Their facebook page is as follows: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Biji-biji-Initiative/264087757052385

    ReplyDelete

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