Solid waste management by considering composting potential in Malaysia toward a green country

Solid waste disposal has become a serious issue for country and municipal governments throughout the nation. As available landfill space decreases and the cost of siting and building new landfill increases, local authorities are struggling to develop alternative means of meeting the waste disposal challenge. Landfilling is the most widely used method for solid waste disposal in countries with tropical settlement. Landfills have created various environmental problems such as emissions and leachate. The public has become more aware concerning landfill issues such as increasing concern on the groundwater contamination, potential release of toxic gases and odor. A big part of these problems come from organic waste into the solid waste. Municipal solid waste in Malaysia has a large percent of food waste (around 50-60 percent) that makes a lot of problems in disposal methods. It has emerged as a potentially viable means by which local governments can reduce the volume of waste entering landfills by diverting the organic fraction. Composting is a biological process, in which the organic matter is biodegraded by microorganisms under controlled conditions of temperature, moisture content, oxygen, PH and the retention time that can be initiated by mixing biodegradable organic matter with bulking agents to enhance the porosity of the mixture. In this study, a composting plant in Malaysia is considered that uses organic waste from the market (market waste). Five tons organic waste per day is received in the plant, and it is treated by the wind raw composting method. After calculating costs and benefits of this method result shows that total quantitative benefit of this plant is not much higher than a total quantitative cost but this result is just for quantitative parameter. This method has a lot of qualitative benefits such as: reducing the amount of municipal solid waste, transportation cost of carrying municipal solid waste to land fill, emissions and leachate of landfill, increasing life span of landfill and reducing land use. Composting organic materials that have been diverted from landfills ultimately avoids the production of methane and leachate formulation in the landfills regarding to 50 percent of organic waste in municipal solid waste of Malaysia. With removing this amount of waste from MSW with using composting method, not only the environmental problems of land filling can be reduced but also the costs of transportation and other costs of disposal can be reduced by 50%. Because of one of the most important problems in tropical settlement is to find proper methods to dispose of municipal solid waste toward decreasing pollution, producing compost can be a suitable way but expanding of this treatment method in Malaysia closely related to economic governmental support

Environmental Assessment of Municipal Solid Waste Disposal Options in Malaysia

Abstract: The Malaysian inhabitants has been growing at a rate of 2.4% per annum or about 600,000 per annum since 1994.So, the municipal solid waste (MSW) generation also increases, which makes MSW management vital. In 2003, the average amount of MSW generated in Malaysia was 0.5-0.8 kg/ person/day. And, by the year 2020, the quantity of MSW generated was estimated to have increased to 31,000 tons. Currently, landfilling is the only method used for the discarding of municipal solid waste in Malaysia, and the majority of the landfill sites are open dumping areas, which causes severe environmental and social threats. So, the aim of this study is taking into account the present condition of disposal options in Selangor state regarding environmental point of view. Life cycle Analysis is a method which is used to consider disposal methods. In this Article life cycle assessment tool is used to weigh up different treatment scenarios with Eco-indicator (Europe 99) methodology which is applied to model different scenarios. Research, showed that all scenarios has a high amount of different potential impacts, Otherwise analysis illustrated first scenario which is the existing condition of Malaysian disposal method, is not preferable than others because of its high contribution on climate change , respiratory organics and carcinogens. Scenario 3 also has high impacts on respiratory inorganic, ecotoxicity and acidification. In addition, second scenario has the average impacts and its situation is between S1 and S3. However, environmental impacts of disposal methods could be considered by decision makers in future and it should be completed by different solid waste management methods and defining different scenarios in the country to introduce the most environmentally and economic method to the authorities

Environmental management regarding resource recovery in Malaysia

Waste disposal is a global problem contributing to the ongoing climate change due to large emissions of greenhouse gases. So, by using a waste material as a resource instead of land filling, the greenhouse gas emissions from landfills will be reduced. Also, Waste material can be used for waste incineration with energy recovery, thus decreasing the greenhouse gas emission from energy utilization by changing from fossil fuels to a partly renewable fuel. The production of Refuse Derived Fuels (RDF) involves the mechanical processing of household waste using screens, shredders and separators to recover recyclable materials and to produce a combustible product Regarding Resource Recovery Center/Waste to Energy (RRC/WtE) Facility in Malaysia that located in Semenyih. This System involves the removal of inert and compostable materials followed by pulverization to produce a feedstock which be incinerated in power stations. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and forecasting of the number of these facilities that Kuala Lumpur will need regarding to potential of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) generation and Refuse Derive Fuel that will be produce from that in the future. This plant can produce average 7.5 MWh electricity from 700 tons MSW or 200 ton RDF per day that approximately is used 1.8 MWh per day inside the pant, and it can sell around 5.7 MWh daily. Kuala Lumpur will generate around 7713 tons MSW per day, and it is able to produce 2466 ton RDF per day. Regarding to potential of MSW and RDF generation by 2020 in Kuala Lumpur it will need around 11 plants to treatment of MSW that this number of plant are able to produce around 62.7 MWh electricity per da