ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Household Solid Waste Composition
in Balakong City, Malaysia:
Trend and Management
Mohd Armi Abu Samah1, Latifah Abd Manaf1, Amimul Ahsan2,
Wan Nor Azmin Sulaiman1, P. Agamuthu4, Jeffrey Lawrence D’Silva3
More details
Hide details
1Faculty of Environmental Studies,
2Faculty of Engineering,
3Institute for Social Science Studies,
Putra University Malaysia, Malaysia
4Institute Biological Science, University of Malaya, Malaysia
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2013;22(6):1807-1816
KEYWORDS
ABSTRACT
Waste is an obvious by-product that comes from human activities. Urbanization, economic development,
and improving living standards in cities all have an impact on the increase of the quantity and difficulty
of generated waste. Fast population growth and industrialization degrades the urban environment and places
serious stress on natural resources. Inefficient management and disposal of solid waste is a noticeable cause
of degradation of the environment in most cities of the developing world. MSW generation depends on township
size and level of economic standards. Thus, it was proven by the MSW generated in the selected area of
Kluang (a small town in the southern part of Peninsular Malaysia) amounted to as little as 45 tons and as much
as 3,000 tons in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia's capital). More analysis reported that the largest sources of MSW
generation come from household waste, followed by industrial and commercial wastes. In Selangor State, the
highest percentage of MSW consisted of putrescible waste of approximately 46%, followed by plastic and
paper at 15% and 14%, respectively. This paper focuses on the trend and management of household solid
waste composition generated in Balakong City, Malaysia. A survey for household residents in eight housing
areas was carried out for one month and data were collected on a daily basis. The composition of solid waste
collected was segregated into different components (organic waste, plastic, paper, glass, metal, and other). For
overall household solid waste composition generated in the Balakong area, organic waste recorded the highest
percentage at 555.5%. Then, followed by plastic waste 82.2%, paper 74.4%, other waste 42.9%, glass
25.8%, the lowest waste generated was metal at 18.9%. There is a relation between the economic position of
a country and per capita waste generation rate. While the standard of living rises, waste generation rates also
are increasing. The world trend of solid waste generation nowadays (including Malaysia) is mostly dependent
on the changing consumption pattern, and also related to climate and seasonal differences. Thus, the management
and planning of solid waste generated must be enhanced to improve sustainable solid waste management
in Malaysia. Besides, public awareness, funding, expertise, equipment, and facilities that are currently lacking
must be provided.