How it all started

The first author of our published paper started practising a zero waste lifestyle back in 2018 and realised how much waste people create every day. This motivated them to conduct preliminary research on how the Malaysian government collects and manages waste in their country. Malaysia, a developing country in Southeast Asia, is facing significant difficulties in plastic waste management, primarily driven by the rapid increase in plastic consumption in recent years.

Although in recent years, public places such as shopping malls and airports have provided recycling bins to segregate waste, most households in Malaysia still do not practise waste segregation at home. This is due to a lack of enforcement and poor infrastructure, leading to waste contractors collecting and mixing everything together on garbage trucks, ultimately finding its way into landfills. Individuals and communities can take charge of managing their waste when the government fails to provide necessary support. For example, the first author noticed non-governmental organisations and residents' associations, realising the poor management practices by the government, had initiated several waste management initiatives in their neighbourhoods by promoting zero waste lifestyles and installing recycling stations to combat plastic pollution in their areas. This sparked our interest in discovering why, and which groups of people would have the intention to start such initiatives in their neighbourhoods.

How we gathered data

We sought assistance from representatives from campaigners, school teachers, non-governmental organisations and residents' associations who actively engage in waste management in their respective areas to construct our survey questionnaire. We conducted face-to-face interviews with 400 respondents from 11 districts residing in Kuala Lumpur, the capital city of Malaysia. It is a multi-ethnic urban city where littering forms the majority of plastic pollution, alongside consumption patterns leading to heightened plastic waste mismanagement in the city. We also experienced delays due to COVID-19, which increased our survey duration to 7 months as people did not want to risk infection.

What we discovered

The results were not surprising, as 83% of the respondents did not segregate their waste at their households even though most of them were aware of the environmental impacts of plastic pollution. Additionally, it turned out 64% of respondents are not satisfied with environmental education as it is not prioritised in the school curriculum.

Interestingly, we also discovered that 66% of respondents who are concerned about plastic waste in their environment, not satisfied with the way contractors handle plastic waste in their locality, and of Chinese ethnicity with higher income, favoured strategies such as:

1.  Zero waste lifestyle workshops
2. Collaborations between residents' associations
3. Involving residents' associations and plastic recycling companies in campaign collaborations
4. Implementing single-use plastic ban policies in schools, religious centres, and government agencies

Why is this research valuable

Our research highlights that residents' associations can go beyond their intended goals of guarding their community. For instance, they can take matters into their own hands by working with local non-governmental organisations to start segregating their waste and implementing proper recycling initiatives that eventually improve plastic waste management in their respective communities. By doing so, Kuala Lumpur could be a prime example for other cities in Malaysia to lead the fight against plastic pollution. Policymakers can also make use of identified respondent characteristics to target specialised plastic waste management practices complementing their existing approaches.

Takeaway

There is no single solution that is suitable for every country in the world. Eventually, we need to develop localised solutions to improve existing plastic waste management practices complementing solid waste management globally. In Kuala Lumpur, there are top-down approaches such as waste segregation policy and plastic bag levy. However, the enforcement is still poor, leading to mismanagement of plastic waste, poor recycling rates, and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial environments, posing a threat to all life in their respective ecosystems. Hence, there is a need to develop solutions where concerned citizens and non-governmental organisations come together and step up to create bottom-up approaches to combat plastic pollution that will eventually improve existing plastic waste management systems in every country.

Among our recommendations, we suggest the following bottom-up approaches to empower residents' associations in Malaysia whose primary role is to safeguard their communities:

• Providing incentives to turn "not in my backyard" into a "plastic-free backyard" for waste reduction, and making recycling and composting easier for these communities
• Collaborating with waste collection companies and plastic recycling companies to introduce basic segregation methods and incentives for segregation bins (organic, non-organic, and hazardous waste) in respective residents' associations

Link to the full paper: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-023-01850-1

For those without subscription access, you can find a readable version here: https://rdcu.be/ds31t