Review of municipal solid waste management options in Malaysia, with emphasis on sustainable waste-to-energy options

A beautiful and cleaner environment is the desire of every society. Malaysia is facing uncontrolled increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) generation due to population growth, economic advancement and industrialization but the current major waste disposal practice of landfills is not sustainable. The increasing living standard also saps more energy from the power generation systems where fossil fuel as the major source of fuel for the plants in Malaysia. Malaysia generates about 0.5–1.9 kg/capital/day of MSW; a total of about 25,000 tonnes/day of MSW is currently generated and is estimated to exceed 30,000 tonnes/day by 2020. Malaysian MSW mainly compose of 45% food waste, 24% plastic, 7% paper materials, 6% metal, 4% wood and 3% glass which are commingled, thus characterised of 52-66% moisture content. Currently, 80-95% of collected MSW are landfilled, 5% recycled, while composting and energy recovery are rarely practiced. This paper reviews the solid waste practice in Malaysia and look into alternative management options for sustainability. Malaysia MSW holds recyclable power and energy potential if properly sorted. This work considered sorting at source and the use of the combustible MSW components as fuel to generate heat for a hybrid solar flue gas chimney power plant.

Keywords - Municipal solid waste; waste management practices, waste sorting at source, waste to energy, solar chimney power plant