Legal And Social Issues In The Development Of Waste Management In Malaysia

Throughout man’s history, waste disposal has put great stress in
maintaining a clean and healthy green environment. The
tremendous increasing amount of solid waste becomes a major
challenge for the people and the government in analyzing the
national legislations and the international policy framework for an
effective control and enforcement measures in handling the waste
management. Failure of a state to implement the effective rules,
regulations and social policies will lead to numerous
environmental hazards. The objective of this paper is to analyze
the national legislations and policies in developing the methods
necessary to formulate waste management plans in Malaysia. The
Solid Waste and Public Cleaning Management (Act 672) came
into effect in 2011 and then proceeded by awareness programs to
educate people on the 3R concept – reduce, reuse and recycle.
This paper attempts to discuss some practical methods introduced
by the government, like the so-called “waste-separation scheme”
which was implemented in September 2012. This scheme is in
accordance with the government declaration of educating the
people about going green. At the end, we make some
recommendations in reducing the current negative social impact
of environmental changes due to an increasing quantity of waste
disposal.