Waste management and the role of waste administrators in Selangor, Malaysia

This study highlights the perceptions of waste administrators regarding their main roles and responsibilities, efforts in promoting recycling or waste minimisation and awareness to the problems or constraints they face. Public waste administrators are actors in a waste management system and are often involved in initiating community activities, making decision and implementing policies, which should benefit the communities and the environment. They help to facilitate recycling campaigns in the hope that this will increase awareness and prompt the public to practice sustainable waste management behaviour. However, studies conducted in Malaysia reveal that there is still low public participation in recycling, indifference of the public towards waste minimisation effort and no clear guidelines on effective ways for administrators to conduct effective people based approaches. The lack of enforcements for recycling is also perceived to contribute to the lack of participation from the public. However, this study finds that the administrators are more enthusiastic about school communities participating in recycling programmes as compared to recycling activities run by other volunteers in the community. Administrators perceive that recycling effort should be the responsibility of each individual but the lack of commitment from the public in general to participate, misuse of recycling infrastructure, financial constraints and the absence of proper guidelines hamper many programmes sustainability. Generally, their main concern is to ensure waste is collected and the works monitored while communities should champion these activities with minimal interventions from the authority.