Safe options in managing waste

By R B Bhattacharjee


Thanks to our current lifestyle, disposing of trash has become a billion-ringgit problem. An average Malaysian household produces 0.8kg of waste a day,
while Klang Valley residents weigh in with 1.5kg daily. That doesn’t seem like much until it is multiplied across a population of 25 million. Last year, Malaysians generated in excess of 7.3 million tonnes of garbage, enough to fill 42 Petronas Twin Towers, as one famous example has it. Local authorities spend about RM854 million —
or 60% — of their annual budget on waste-disposal services.

For decades, this by-product of urbanisation was tipped into 246 dumpsites around the peninsula. Most of these facilities are anything but sanitary,
receiving all kinds of hazardous discards that make them environmental disasters. The problem is due to the copious leachate that seeps into the
ground or flows into nearby rivers, contaminating the water supply in many places.
But time is running out for local governments. Waste management experts forecast that over 80% of dumpsites in the country will be filled to the brim in less than two years. Already, scores of sites that have reached their capacity have been closed.

“We have to adopt waste reduction soon,” says the environmental crusader Gurmit Singh. “Basically, the people who generate waste must be prepared
to pay for it.” The situation has become so grave that a Cabinet committee on solid waste management had to be set up earlier this year. At the end of April, Deputy
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, who heads the panel, ordered 16 of the dumpsites that posed a threat to public health to be closed immediately. Another 33 that were situated close to water sources would have to be shut down as soon as possible.

Alternatives at our disposal

What then do we do with our urban waste? Three approaches are on the table: incinerators, sanitary landfills and refuse-derived fuel (RDF) plants.
Waste incineration has been tried with mixed results, including in Langkawi, Pangkor, Tioman and Labuan islands, where small 15-ton thermal plants
have been built. But the incinerator planned for Broga, about 50km south of Kuala Lumpur, is the grand-daddy of them all. Touted to be the largest in Asia, it will cost RM1.5 billion to build and have a capacity of 1,500 tons per day. However, the project, to be developed by Ebara Corp of Japan, has run smack into
protests from day one.

The primary objection against burning solid waste is its high cost. Ton for ton, incineration is twice as costly as tipping waste into a sanitary landfill. When capital costs are included, the ratio jumps dramatically. And that’s just the tip of the dump heap, say opponents of incineration. A by-product of incineration is dioxin, which has been billed as the most dangerous substance made by man.

Critics of the proposed incinerator say the plant is projected to have a lifespan of just 20 to 25 years. That provides too small a window for waste
management at a high cost, they argue. A major problem with waste incineration in the tropics, says the Philippines-based anti-incinerator group Gaia, is that the trash is extremely wet, typically with over 40% moisture content. In Malaysia, this can rise to 60%, says an industry expert. In theory, the waste could be dried, but this means
providing holding facilities, and therefore poses logistical problems, given the quantity and constant generation of waste.

A second option is to spray the waste with fuel to promote burning, but that would push up the costs of waste treatment further. Then there is the question of what is to be done with the incinerator ash. For every three tons of garbage burnt, one ton of toxic ash will be produced, according to a Sahabat Alam Malaysia statement on the project’s environmental impact assessment report.

The Broga project proponents propose to dump the ash in the vicinity of Sungai Saring­git, upstream of a water intake point on the Semenyih river. The
water from the river supplies some two million people in the Klang Valley, Putrajaya and Negri Sembilan. The project’s advocates, on their part, have proposed a further treatment of the waste by vitrification, or combining the toxic waste with glass, which is inert, before it is buried. This raises the question of further costs, but may be necessary to address safety concerns.

“The problem with incineration is maintenance, for which our country has a bad track record,” says Gurmit. “So, it won’t be a surprise if there is a problem one or two years down the road.”
“We are not like Japan or Singapore, which have a good maintenance culture.

“The central question in the incinerator issue concerns dioxin. Who will monitor the dioxin level, and will the monitoring be continuous? These details are
not known,” he points out.

“That is why we have been asking for information about the project to be made public, so that people can identify the potential problems.

“For example, in the case of Bukit Nanas [toxic waste facility], it was only required to monitor the dioxin level once in six months because there were no
testing facilities available then,” says Gurmit.
Given the potential for things to go wrong, it is not suprising that residents in the vicinity of the proposed incinerator have tried to stop it. A first suit was filed by residents of Kampung Broga in November 2003 to get the full details of the project.
On Feb 14 last year, residents of a neighbouring housing estate, Taman Tasik Semenyih, who filed a second suit to stop the project altogether, obtained an interim stop work order.

Dr Zulkefly Mohd Omar, the chairman of the Broga residents sub-committee against the incinerator project is optimistic that the residents will win their
court battle. An encouraging sign, he says, is that the Department of Environment (DoE) has rejected the proposal for a landfill at Broga because it will be located in
the water catchment area.

“Over two million people receive water from the Semenyih river, exposing them to high risk if toxic chemicals leach into the water supply.

“The incinerator is not suitable because all kinds of plastic and metals like aluminium will be burnt, posing a grave danger to the people,” Zulkefly says.

“The RDF plant [in Semenyih] is a better proposal because it has a lesser impact on the environment.”

But these are partial solutions at best, says Zulkefly. “The recycling campaign must be reactivated. Zero waste should become part of our lives.”
For Zulkefly, the track record for incinerators in the country speaks for itself. “The Langkawi incinerator, which is based on Swiss technology, has been
closed down because the waste was too wet. That should be a lesson for us,” he says.

Landfill cheaper, safer

In comparison, disposing waste in a sanitary landfill is a much cheaper and safer option, provided leachate is properly handled.

“Landfill management is all about leachate, leachate and leachate,” says KUB-Berjaya Enviro (KBE) managing director Chock Eng Tah, who is in charge
of the Bukit Tagar sanitary landfill.
Situated 25km from Rawang, the landfill occupies over 687ha nestled in a tranquil oil palm estate. “We could receive more than the 1,500 tonnes that we currently take, but the capacity of the leachate treatment plant must be upgraded first,” says Chock.
To ensure that the leachate does not contaminate water sources, the sanitary landfill’s waste disposal cells are protected by a high-density polyurethane (HDP) liner. Leachate that collects at the bottom is pumped into a holding pond, and then to the treatment plant, where aerobic bacteria get to work on it.
At the current rate of waste production in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, says Chock, the Bukit Tagar landfill will take 40 years to fill.

From an environmental point of view, it is important that no leachate leaks into the ground water. While surface leachate can be treated, the experience of other countries with ground water contamination has proved costly. Ground water monitoring is needed to avoid problems later. The quality of the lining must also be sufficient to ensure that there is no breach in the insulation. The Bukit Tagar facility came under the spotlight in March and April when various quarters sought to trace the source of pollution that led to the shutdown of water supply to parts of the Klang Valley.

Chock maintains that the facility is built to international standards and complies with the DoE’s strict guidelines on solid waste management.
KBE was asked by the federal government at the end of 2003 to prepare an advance cell at Bukit Tagar to receive solid waste from Kuala Lumpur City
Hall (DBKL) when the Selangor government landfill at Air Hitam, Puchong, was closed to DBKL, says Chock.

While Phase 1 of the landfill and the leachate treatment plant was being prepared, leachate from the advance cell was held at a secured holding pond to prevent contamination of water sources. The advance cell will need to be closed in two months, says Chock, unless permission is granted for a six-month extension. By that time, Phase 1 would be ready, he says.

In the face of a growing waste management problem, a 4R strategy — reduce, reuse, recycle and recover — has become increasingly necessary, especially as a consumerist culture takes hold in society. With some 40% of municipal solid waste consisting of organic matter, the potential for turning this into valuable fertiliser is an attractive proposal. Past efforts to jumpstart a comprehensive recycling programme, in which consumers separate recyclables including paper, aluminium and glass, were
doomed by poor maintenance and the lack of financial incentives.

Gurmit points out that the negative aspects of incinerators on the one hand are their high cost and toxic residues, while landfills on the other hand are land-intensive.
“Incinerators have to deal with the disposal of residues. Some people have mixed it with tar, but the question is how long it remains sealed in roadworks,” he says. “It should be cast into cement blocks or vitirified before being buried in a sanitary landfill.”

A third option being pursued is to burn the waste to generate energy in an RDF plant. A project in Semenyih based on this concept is scheduled to come onstream this month.
Gurmit expresses some reservations about its viability. “About 40% of our waste is organic, and wet, so it requires a two-stage burner. That may require fuel to be used, which raises the question of whether there is any net energy gain,” says Gurmit. “The better method is to go for waste reduction.”

“Ideally, all organic matter should be composted, and all recyclable items removed. Then the rest should be buried. Incinerators can be an option when
you run out of land,” he adds. “Zero waste targets have to be set at some time.”

posted by Lim Sze Ghee