Waste to Wealth

Waste to Wealth

Waste is often defined as something unwanted and has no economic value. However, increasingly waste is beginning to be seen as a resource with certain economic values for another user. In many countries including Malaysia, waste quite often represents jobs, financial opportunity, raw materials for new products as well as an economic lifeline for some people. Possible “wealth” can be generated from various kinds of waste with appropriate technology as illustrated in Figure 1.

How it Works in Malaysia

Recycling of Waste

In Malaysia, recycling of waste is an established business. People have been collecting old newspapers, glass bottles, metals and other materials to be recycled into useful products for decades. To date, there are many different players involved in the recycling business, ranging from small primary paper collectors or landfill scavengers to a medium scale scrap metal middleman and a large recycling industry. The average prices of recyclable materials at different levels of recycling in the markets are shown in Table 1 below: A simple small home-based plastic recycling industry in Perak is described in Figure 2.

Waste-to-Energy

Energy from waste can be generated in two possible ways, namely through the decomposition process of waste and combustion of waste (See Figure 3). The bacterial activities in the decomposition process of organic substances in the waste will generate biogas (such as methane gas), which is a source of renewable energy. A common example for waste-to-energy from biogas is landfill gas which can be captured and used to generate electricity. Energy generated is both a source of income, and an entitlement to carbon credit under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which was established under the Kyoto Protocol. CDM allows governments or private entities in industrialised countries to implement emission reduction projects and receive credit in the form of “certified emission reductions” or CERs.

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