I would like to add to Suresh Gnasegarah's comments that the government should get a wider picture of the growing solid waste problem by looking at the most evident causes.

1) Lack of education

  • Are children learning about recycling in school? The area outside schools are filthy with waste from illegal hawkers. Is there any group effort in schools to hold paper drives, bottle drives, etc and award prizes based on the amount one child or an entire classroom collects in a certain period? Some schools may but is there a national policy?

  • Public service announcements exist on RTM and Astro, but there is little emphasis on the danger of not recycling.

    • 2) Lack of information on packaging

  • Materials - can the government begin to mandate percentages of recyclable content for certain high cube packaging types, such as bottles, paper boxes, etc?

  • Packaging design - can the government begin to focus on excessive packaging to the point of surcharges for designs that are excessively heavy in non-recyclable materials?

    • 3) Garbage Separation - garbage should be separated, dry and wet. Citizens can minimise wet (edible) garbage by using in-sink grinders (insinkerators) to handle edible waste. People who do not throw out wet garbage and who recycle paper, bottles, etc have very little garbage for the authorities to handle.

    4) Enforcement

    • Carrot - increase the potential value of recyclable items such as bottles, cans, glass, etc by adding a deposit that is refundable when returned to a proper recycling centre. (Must establish convenient and well run centres!) Hypermarkets such as Giant, Carrefour and Tesco can have automatic machines to handle bottles, cans and jars, making payment in credits to be used in the store. The technology is readily available. Make the machines mandatory for permission to build such a store (that sells so many goods wrapped in packaging that becomes waste).

  • Stick - require that companies that package goods pay the government a tax to take care of the waste based on the level of non or hard-to recycle materials in the packaging. Use more recyclable base ingredients; require certain levels of recyclability, etc.

  • Bigger Stick - mandate 'official' garbage bags at RM X.XX each, sold in stores, proceeds to the local council or DOE. Put the refuse in that bag or live with it in your house.

  • Much bigger stick - fines, fines, fines for not using the official bag, big fines and the guts to enforce the rules. (Dare I hope?)

    • Building Code for new housing should require insinkerators - these can be easily made in Malaysia.

    Incinerators are wasteful and dangerous. Common sense tells you as much. RM1 billion in this direction would go a longer way toward resolving issues with handling solid waste than any number of incinerators.

    I would not trust the operation of such a risky, first-time project to a group of people (Barisan Nasional) who have not been able to really impress a maintenance culture upon the Malaysian public and who foster close ties to government elites simply to earn a living (cronyism).

    The residents of Broga have only one choice with the steamroller BN, move. I really feel sorry for them and I wonder who is next.

    I am always prepared to move and I have done so at least twice when the local council failed to acknowledge or perform its duties or the area finally became intolerable because the residents were so inconsiderate of their environment, etc.

    One must be mobile in Malaysia to obtain a healthy environment, but space is running out!