RUBBISH, NOT MY BUSINESS?

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT IF IT IS YOUR BUSINESS.

IS GEBENG LYNAS’ WASTE BIN?

MALAYSIA’S FIRST KILLER PLANT.

PLEASE VIEW ON BIG SCREEN

SAMPAH CHALLENGES ASTRO TO SHOW THIS!

ONLY THE DUMB DUMPS OR INCINERATE?

Are we determined to increase the amount of waste we are recycling and composting? Have we set a target and if we have what steps are we implementing to meet this target? What is happening to the municipal residual waste after the rest has been sent for recycling and composting. Is the Ministry formulating the most efficient and effective strategy for dealing with residual waste?

Until now, sending all residual waste to landfill has been the most common and short-cut practice. Short-cuts are not solutions. This has got to change. The whole world is doing its utmost to cut down on landfills. Historically, landfill has been the cheaper options but will not be so for much longer. We are a small country and waste management seems not to get priority attention, unlike say, the European Countries. I read that the European Landfill Directive has set very stringent targets to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill and failure to comply could potentially lead to severe European refraction fines. They have set targets that by 2010 bio-degradable municipal waste going to landfill must be 75% of 1995 levels, 50% by 2013, and 35% by 2020. DO WE EVEN HAVE THESE TARGETS?

Shouldn’t there be a strong environmental incentive to reduce land filled waste as landfill is a major contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, due to the methane rleased by decomposing waste.

Wouldn’t energy recovery technologies be the best alternative to landfills in terms of how we deal with residual waste?

Like always, Malaysia looks for the easiest way out of a problem. Our answer to energy recovery technologies is INCINERATION. We have some 5 or 6 incinerators and after spending millions, NONE are operating! Yes, NONE! And I am aware that the Selangor government did go to China to negotiate the possibility of having another incinerator to solve its waste management problems.

Incinerators do not provide a renewable source of energy through “capturing” the energy produced by burning waste. The incineration of recyclable material actually results in even more fossil fuel energy being consumed because more of the same materials will need to be used to replace them.

When waste is burned in an incinerator, heat is produced which can be used to create electricity. Proponents of “energy from waste” incinerators claim that electricity created when waste is burned is a type of renewable energy as it displaces the equivalent amount of electricity to be generated at a power station from fossil fuels. However the truth is that incineration actually INCREASES emission of greenhouse gases responsible for global warming compared to recycling. The incinerator will increase Co2 enormously! This means that energy from waste incinerators contribute to climate change rather than reducing it. Here is why!

I quote from “Sound Resources Management Group Inc.”

1. The level of energy “captured” in incinerators compared to the potential energy present in the waste is very low.

2. Incinerators burn fossil fuels when plastic is present in the waste stream, as plastic is made from oil.

3. When materials are destroyed in incinerators, new onces have to be made to replace them. The extraction and processing of virgin materials uses huge amounts of energy. E.g. creating a tone of aluminum cans, made from raw material bauxite, takes around fine times as much energy as producing a tone of recycled aluminum cans. A Canadian study estimated than “on average recycling saves three to five times as much energy as is produced by incerating municipal solid waste.”

TO FILL OR NOT TO FILL!

MAYBE OUR YANG BERKHIDMAT CAN DECIDE?

YOU THINK OUR CITY ELDERS CARE?

Statement by Dr. Joan Clos, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Executive Director of UN-HABITAT on the occasion of World Habitat Day, 3 October 2011 Each year on World Habitat Day, the first Monday in October, we bring to the world's attention a matter of great concern in our rapidly urbanizing world. This year we look at the impact of cities in creating climate change, and, in turn, the impact of climate disruption on cities, and what cities are doing about it. We live in an age where the world's population will have grown to 7 billion by the end of this month and where more than half of them live in towns and cities. Projections indicate that this will increase to two-thirds in just over a generation from now. How we manage this rapid urbanisation is one of the greatest challenges facing us. We must bear in mind that the greatest repercussions of climate disasters both begin and end in cities. According to UN-HABITAT's Cities and Climate Change: Global Report on Human Settlements, it is estimated that by 2050, there could be as many as 200 million environmental refugees worldwide, many of whom will be forced from their homes by rising sea levels and the increased frequency of flooding or drought. Prevention should be addressed through better urban planning and building codes so that city residents, especially the poorest, are protected as far as possible against disaster. Such measures can also help to keep their ecological footprint to the minimum. Climate induced risks such as rising sea levels, tropical cyclones, heavy precipitation events and extreme weather conditions can disrupt the basic fabric and functioning of cities with widespread reverberations for the physical infrastructure, economy and society of cities. These include public health risks in urban areas. We already know that the impacts of climate disruption will be particularly severe in low-elevation coastal zones where many of the world's largest cities are located. And always it is the urban poor, especially slum dwellers, who are most at risk when disaster strikes. We need to stress the provision of adequate adaptation measures based on urban planning. Even though we are still trying to understand some of these extreme climatic events, we have the know-how and the strategies to take preventive measures. Urbanization offers many opportunities to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to deal with climate change. Given that most global energy consumption occurs in cities, roughly half of it from burning fossil fuels in cities for urban transport, the solution seems obvious. This is due to the fact that the economies of scale produced by the concentration of economic activities in cities also make it cheaper and easier to take action to minimize both emissions and climate hazards. The social, economic and political actors within cities must therefore become key players in developing these strategies. Many towns and cities, especially in developing countries, are still grappling with climate change strategies, working out how to access international climate change funding and how to learn from pioneering cities. We should reflect on this World Habitat Day on how we turn our cities – arguably the greatest achievements of human civilisation – into better cities for the future.