Segregation of Municipal Solid Waste and Recycling Potential for Residential Hostel UiTM Sarawak

Effective waste management through municipal solid waste (MSW) composition study is important for numerous reasons, including the need to estimate material recovery potential, to identify sources of component generation, to facilitate design of processing equipment, to estimate physical, chemical, and thermal properties of the waste and to maintain compliance with Malaysian Environmental Quality Act1974. The scope of this study focuses on the segregation of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the residential hostel in Universiti Teknologi Mara Sarawak (UiTMS). The resultant demonstrates that plastics, organic, papers and polystyrene pack constitute the highest component in the hostel MSW. Among these components, plastics come on the first place, whereby it constitutes 35.35% of the total MSW, followed by organic or food waste at 27.8%, papers at 16.13% and polystyrene pack at 11.95%. This paper concludes that integrated solid waste management should be implemented for the effective solid waste management in UiTMS. Proper mix of alternatives and technologies such as waste combustion (incineration), land filling and recycling are being proposed due to main composition to be wastes from plastics, foods and papers. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n10p64