Food Waste Separation Project

In conjunction with the Tunza Eco-Gen?s February 2016 theme (No Food Waste), the 2Rs + 1S waste separation project was simply a self-practicable waste management project that I have conducted previously in my home university?s Za?ba (Seventh) Residential College, University of Malaya. Charity often begins at home hence everything should start from basic as it is easy to ask someone to follow (influence someone?s) but hard to make the lead. The introduction of the 2Rs + 1S waste separation project is to promote a new horizon of waste management awareness in my residential college.

It is merely a trouble-free project that able to educate one?s to know little fundamental knowledge about simple waste management which eventually helps to make the Earth a better place. The project aims to build and install the position of youth in the sustainability chain of an integrated waste management system. Besides, it targeted to influence the needs of youth to work for their better living surroundings (lifestyles and cultures) in waste management control towards environmental sustainability.

To most of us, it is somehow rare for us to talk about (food) waste management. Even so, it is undeniable that none of us can escape from generating waste. The municipal solid waste is one of the three major environmental problems in Malaysia. At present, over 23,000 tons of wastes are produced each day in our country yet almost all this waste is commingled.

The gazetted national (Malaysia) Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007 which recently took into strict enforcement requires the separation of waste at source has strengthened the purpose to conduct this waste campaign. Nevertheless, the 2Rs + 1S waste separation project certainly acts as an easy-to-adopt waste strategy plan which comprehensively applies to all walks of life in many places.

It is quite common to have 3R?s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle) but indeed the factual objective of 3R?s maybe ineffective. The third element of ?Recycle? in the 3R?s principle has wrongly misled the public. Anyone of us can reduce and reuse the production of waste but none of us can recycle waste within our own capacity. Recycling process covers the mechanism of transforming a less important material into a new form of beneficial product that often involves machinery procedures.

Human can only recycle our waste by sending it to the recycling centers and/or by separating the waste prior to discard it into the correct recycling bins. Hence, the 2Rs + 1S waste separation project proposed to be the slight modification of 3R?s model into a different perception of waste separation at source.

In actual fact, what we can really work out as an individual in order to tackle the waste management is to minimize the creation of waste and separate our waste accordingly. Separation of waste at the source will be the key in handling integrated waste management system whereby the 2Rs + 1S waste separation project encompasses the three significant elements of:

a)      Reduce

b)      Reuse

c)      Separate/Segregate – both dry and wet (organic) waste