1.

0 INTRODUCTION

Solid waste can be defined as the useless and unwanted products in the solid
state derived from the activities of and discarded by society which require
treatment and/or disposal. Solid waste is one of the three major
environmental problems in Malaysia besides air and water pollution. It plays a
significant role in the ability of nature to sustain life within its capacity. An
estimated 30,000 to 33,000 tonnes of waste being produced a day in 2015
compared to 22,000 tonnes of solid waste produced daily in 2012. However,
this amount is expected to rise to 30,000 tonnes by the year 2020. The
amount of waste generated continues to increase due to the increasing
population and development. Furthermore, only less than 10% of the waste is
being recycled.

Despite the massive amount and complexity of waste produced, the

standards of waste management in Malaysia are still poor. These include
outdated and poor documentation of waste generation rates and its
composition, inefficient storage and collection systems, disposal of municipal
wastes with toxic and hazardous waste, indiscriminate disposal or dumping of
wastes and inefficient utilization of disposal site space.

Incineration is one of the waste treatment process besides landfilling that

involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials,
which also known as a "thermal treatment". The incinerator process is
relatively simple to understand. Garbage is brought to the site where it is
then fed into the incinerator. Inside the incinerator chambers are flames that

are usually around 1316 that burn the waste in either one stage or in

multiple stages. As the waste is burned, ash is produced which is collected for
later disposal in a landfill.

Currently, Malaysia has five small scale incinerators with the capacity of less
than 100 tonnes each in Pulau Langkawi (100 ton/day), Pulau Tioman (10
ton/day), Pulau Pangkor (20 ton/day), Cameron Highlands (40 ton/day) and
Labuan (60 ton/day). However, use of incinerators for waste management in
Malaysia is controversial especially due to the environmental issues as it has
the advantages and disadvantages to the people and environment.

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There are few advantages of incineration as a waste management
method. Two of the primary advantages of incineration are that waste
volumes are reduced by an estimated of 80-95% and the need for land and
landfill space is greatly reduced. For urban areas, this can be especially
important as urban land is often at a premium. Through Waste-to-
Energy processes, incineration can be used to produce electricity and heat
that can be used to power and heat nearby building while the ash produced
can be used by the construction industry. Incineration also eliminates the
problem of leachate that is produced by landfills.

However, incineration also has a lot of disadvantages that can be discussed.

The high cost of incineration plant has been a major turnoff for municipal
authorities and is only now being addressed with the introduction of Waste-
to-Energy plants. The need for huge waste to incinerate has led to
abandonment of other plans for recycling and reuse of waste. Dioxins are
produced in the treatment and is a cancer forming chemical. These are
produced in the smoke stack. The plants also require skilled personnel for
operation and continuous maintenance.

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2.0 SOLUTIONS / VIEWS

In my opinion, incineration is not relevant in Malaysia. This is due to many

reasons that will bring disadvantages to our country and its citizen. If it wants
to be applied in Malaysia, many steps need to be taken to ensure that we are
really capable in managing the system to avoid any loss in many aspects. In
the meantime, with the lack of expertise in this incinerator system, I think
landfill is still the best method in managing solid waste in Malaysia. I will
discuss more about why incineration is not relevant in Malaysia in the
paragraphs below.

The main reason why I think incineration is not relevant in Malaysia is

because it is not financially competitive for our country at this moment.
Although the process of incineration is simple, the machinery that drives the
process is not. The incinerator is very costly due to the high moisture content
of the waste produce in Malaysia which is about 60-70%. The average cost of
an incinerator is around USD 525,000-650,000 per daily ton of capacity which
is equal to around RM 3 million in our currency. This is only for construction
not including the maintenance of the incinerator. The maintenance of this
incinerator is crucial because incineration is about a combustion reaction
which means without a proper handling, it may leads to explosion. Besides,
as an incinerator is consuming high fuel, it will lead to the higher cost
compared to the landfilling method. As in most of the developing county, the
social costs of incineration are staggering. The huge amount of money spent
on incineration goes into complicated machinery and most of it leaves the
country in the pockets of the multinational companies that build these
monsters. In Brescia, Italy, they spent about $400,000,000 building an
incinerator and have created just 80 full-time jobs. While Nova Scotia, a
province of Canada, after rejecting an incinerator, has created over 3000 jobs
in the handling of the discarded resources and in the industries using these
secondary materials. This showed that without incinerator, more jobs
opportunity can be created. In addition, the air pollution controls system that
are needed in the incinerator are extremely expensive. Very often up to one
half of the costs of a plant is due to air pollution control facilities. As the laws

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can change and maybe require updates in the air pollution controls, this could
lead to much higher costs in the future.

Besides the high cost of the machines, the tipping fees of the incineration is
higher than the tipping fees for landfill. Tipping fees are the fees paid by
haulers to dump large amounts of discarded materials in landfills or
incinerators. Tip fees are also paid at composting facilities and can be paid at
some recycling facilities, though most recycling facilities pay haulers for their
materials. Since the late 1980s, the incinerator tipping fees have been
substantially higher than the landfill tip fees and the trend is constant until
now. The tip fees at incinerators are about 50% higher than those at landfills.
The average landfill tipping fee in Malaysia is RM 28 to RM 46 per ton while
the incinerator tipping fees is double the value.

Furthermore, in Malaysia we are lack of expertise in this incinerator system.

Due to the poor-technical expertise in this technology, the maintenance of
the incinerators will be difficult and very costly in future as we need to call an
expert from outside. The worker at the incineration plants also must undergo
an additional training session and usually paid more than the employees at
the landfill. If the incinerator is not maintained well, the project will be a
failure and loss to the country.

Besides that, the GST might arises. This will cause Malaysian to feel more
pressurized on the current situation. There are a lot of benefits of incinerators
and it cant be denied. However, current situation in our country in term of
economy is not suitable for using incinerators. Malaysian will put blame on
government when taxes is increases. That is why incinerator is not relevant in
Malaysia.

The second reason why incinerator is not relevant in Malaysia is because it is

not pollution-free. Incineration facilities emit particulate matter, volatile
organic compounds (VOCs), heavy metals, dioxins, sulfur dioxide, mercury
and furans. Most of the chemicals are known to be persistent or very resistant

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to degradation in the environment, bio accumulative which may build up in
the tissues of living organisms and toxic. This properties will give bad effect
on human health and environment. In particular, plastics and metals are the
major sources of the calorific value of the waste. The combustion of plastics,
like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants. Some
of the emitted chemicals are carcinogenic which means a cancer-causing
chemicals while some are endocrine disruptors which can also cause
respiratory ailments, reproductive abnormalities, cancers of the stomach,
lungs and esophagus as well as ischemic heart disease. Main example of an
emerging threat is nanoparticle emissions from incinerators. These ultrafine
particles are not captured through air pollution control measures and may
contribute to between three and six percent of deaths in large urban areas in
Europe. Many of these pollutants also enter the food supply and concentrate
up through the food chain. Contaminants are also distributed when food
produced near incinerators is shipped to other communities. This is the
reasons why there are protest by the local residents and non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) where they claimed it involved health risks. This is due
to the emissions of toxic organic compounds and metals from stack,
complications caused by disposal or inorganic residue and difficulty of
monitoring facilities after the preliminary test burn. Therefore, the
incinerators are not relevant in Malaysia as it will bring many bad impacts to
the people and environment.

The next reason is because incineration is not climate-friendly

technology. The incineration process involves the generation of climate-
relevant emissions. There are mainly emission of carbon dioxide, nitrogen
oxides, ammonia and carbon monoxide that is measured as total carbon
which can cause climate change. Carbon dioxide constitutes the main
climate-relevant emission of waste incineration and considerably higher. The
climate-relevant carbon dioxide emissions from waste incineration are
determined by the proportion of waste whose carbon compounds are
assumed to be of fossil origin. Although this carbon dioxide is directly
released into the atmosphere and thus makes a real contribution to the

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greenhouse effect, only the climate-relevant carbon dioxide emissions from
fossil sources are considered for the purposes of a global analysis. In solid
waste incinerators, nitrogen oxides which are formed essentially from the
nitrogen contained in the waste, from the combustion process itself and from
spontaneous reaction will be emitted along with the fly ash. Nitrogen oxides
or also known as the laughing gas is ranked third behind carbon dioxide
and methane in contributing to global warming. Although the concentration
of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere is considerably lower than that of carbon
dioxide, the global warming potential of nitrogen oxide is over 300 times
greater. In addition, emissions of ammonia arise in particular from the use of
ammonia as an additive in waste gas treatment measures for nitrogen
removal in the incineration process. Besides, as a product of incomplete
combustion, carbon monoxide is formed. Carbon monoxide is an indicator
substance for the combustion process and an important quality criterion for
the level of combustion of the gases. Although carbon monoxide is only a
weak greenhouse gas, its influence on climate goes beyond its own direct
effects. Its presence affects concentrations of other greenhouse gases
including methane, tropospheric ozone and carbon dioxide. As incineration
process did contribute to the climate change, therefore it is not relevant in
Malaysia to save our earth.

The fourth reason why incineration is not relevant in Malaysia is because

incineration is a waste of energy. Although incineration facilities do produce
energy from waste, but recycling is a far more effective form of recovering
energy from our discarded products. Recycling conserves an average of three
to five times more energy than using incinerators because manufacturing
new products from recycled materials uses much less energy than making
products from virgin raw materials. This means that waste incinerators are
effectively burning three to five units of energy to make one unit, which is
nothing short of a waste of energy. Incineration also dissipates the zero waste
practices such as recycling and composting among the Malaysians. This will
then lessen the materials efficiency and the conserve energy spent on
resource extraction and process.

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The difficulties to site the incinerator will be the other reason why
incineration is not relevant in Malaysia. Siting incineration facilities has been
an enormous challenge over the past two decades and will only grow more
challenging in the future. Many existing incineration plants were sited in low-
income urban areas alongside other toxin-producing facilities, contributing to
a great number of cases of environmental injustice. This is due to the bad
impacts of the incinerators which make it impossible to be sited near the
residential area or at the urban city. Its bad effect on human health and
environment required it to be located at the area far from the public.
Experiences in Europe and UK have shown the tendering, planning and
permitting processes for thermal treatment facilities such as incinerators can
take up to ten years. Due to the limited and high price of land in Malaysia
now, incinerator is not relevant in our country.

Last but not least, in my opinion, the habits and the mentality of people
in Malaysia itself make it more irrelevant for incinerator to be built in
Malaysia. The incinerator only allowed people to be more lazy and
irresponsible. Incinerators burn out 90% of waste. However, the waste
problem would not solve as habits and attitude of Malaysian who are selfish
and ignorant still not change. Waste generated per day will continue arises.
Current problem in Malaysia is too many waste generated per day and this
problem can be solved when Malaysian having awareness on waste problem.
Malaysian attitude need to be changed instead of using costly incinerators.
As compared with Japan, they are highly dependent on incinerators but their
attitude on recycling, reuse and reduce should be respected. We as Malaysian
should practices these habits too. Incineration also undermines zero waste
practices such as recycling and composting, which close the loop on
materials efficiency and conserve energy spent on resource extraction and
processing. The reason is peoples efforts to avoid waste production are
minimized when they know that that their waste is burnt in an incineration

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 plant. Therefore, for the time being, incinerators are not relevant in Malaysia
yet to educate our people on managing our wastes correctly and efficiently.

3.0 CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, for the time being, I think incinerators are not relevant yet in
our county as the available technology is unsuitable for incineration of the
local waste. Taking all these small incinerators in our country as an example,
they had failed due to faulty design, improper operation, poor maintenance
and high diesel usage and waste characteristics which is due to high moisture
content of 60% to 70%. The main reason for the failure is they were all
designed for western characteristic of waste which is quite different from
Malaysias environment. So until we have an expertise in this area of solid
management, I think we should not build an incinerator yet in our county. For

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 me, landfill is still the best economic way for waste management in Malaysia.
However, as there are still lack in system management that leads to other
problems as well, landfills look inefficient for us. So, instead of using costly
incinerators why dont we focused on landfill improvement system? This will
reduce the cost and reduce the burden on Malaysian. The most important
issue here is, the attitude of Malaysian need to be changed first. Waste
generated per day continue increases because of the ignorant attitude of
Malaysian that lead to the insufficient of landfills in our country. Therefore,
Malaysian need to be educated first about solid waste management before
our county can have an efficient and successful landfills or incinerators to
manage our municipal solid waste in our county.

4.0 APPENDICES

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 Table 1 : Composition of Malaysian MSW

Table 2 : Solid Waste Generated at Kuala Lumpur

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Figure 1 : Incinerator at Cameron Highland

Figure 2 : People Demonstrate

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 Figure 3 : Incinerator at Langkawi

Figure 4 : Open Dumping at Cameron Highland

5.0 REFERENCES

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1. Carbon Monoxide: Its Environmental Impact. (n.d.). Retrieved from Earth
System Science Education Alliances:
http://esseacourses.strategies.org/module.php?module_id=170
2. Ismail, I. (2016, jan 20). Malaysians producing more solid waste than before.
Retrieved from Malay Mail Online:
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/malaysians-producing-
more-solid-waste-than-before
3. Low, C. M. (2014, Jan 8). The future of waste disposal. Retrieved from The
Star Online: http://www.thestar.com.my/news/community/2014/01/08/the-
favoured-option-waste-management-experts-believe-landfills-most-viable-
method-for-future/
4. Rahman, H. A. (2013). Incinerator In Malaysia: Really Needs? . Retrieved from
International Journal of Chemical, Environmental & Biological Sciences
(IJCEBS): http://www.isaet.org/images/extraimages/B1013017.pdf
5. Row, J. R. (2010, April 10). Pros and Cons of Incineration for Landfill Relief.
Retrieved from Bright Hub Engineering:
http://www.brighthubengineering.com/structural-engineering/89810-pros-and-
cons-of-incineration-for-landfill-relief/
6. Solid Waste in Malaysia. (2002). Retrieved from Global Environment Centre:
http://www.gecnet.info/index.cfm?&menuid=83
7. Waste Incineration : Advantages and Disadvantages. (2015, Sept 18).
Retrieved from Green Tumble: http://greentumble.com/waste-incineration-
advantages-and-disadvantages/
8. Xiang, J. K. (2012, April 10). Incinerator for Municipal Solid Waste in Kuala
Lumpur. Retrieved from Green and Blue Group:
http://greenbluegroup.blogspot.my/2012/04/incinerator-for-municipal-solid-
waste.html

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