Improvement of electrical and electronic equipment waste collection model for Malaysian recycling industry / Rahmah Abdulsalam Attallah

Rahmah , Abdulsalam Attallah (2017) Improvement of electrical and electronic equipment waste collection model for Malaysian recycling industry / Rahmah Abdulsalam Attallah. Masters thesis, University of Malaya.

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Abstract

Due to the growing awareness towards the environment, resources shortage and insufficient landfill capacities in many countries, more attention has been given by the government to take action for proper waste disposal, in order to protect the ecosystem. One of the serious waste types to be handled is the electrical and electronic waste (ewaste), which is estimated to be 20–50 million tons, generated per year worldwide, which certainly cause a negative effect towards the environment. The collection process of the e-waste is the most important stage to achieve successful e-waste management. In Malaysia, the current e-waste management model is not catering the huge increase of the e-waste, since only 5% of the accumulated waste is being recycled. On this ground, the aim of this study is to develop the model for electrical and electronic waste collection in Malaysia to overcome the problems threatening the environment. Content analysis approach is used to review the literature for evaluating the e-waste collection models in some of the developed counties. In order to develop the improved e-waste collection for Malaysia, benchmarking study was conducted, where the current e-waste collection model of Malaysia was benchmarked with the Switzerland e-waste collection model, as it is the best legal e-waste collection model in the world. The benchmarking parameters are: e-waste flow scenario, financial flow as well as rules and regulations of the e-waste collection implemented by the department of environment. An improved model has been developed based on the result of the benchmarking. A three case study was conducted to validate the improved collection model for the Malaysian industry, while questionnaires as well as a face to face interview was conducted to collect the data for the case studies. The results show that the Malaysian e-waste collection scenario has several difficulties, as there are many parties responsible on the e-waste management which leads to the leaking of the e-waste in the environment, plus there are informal collection centers which collect the waste and end up with the land filled without proper disposal. Furthermore, the amount of e-waste is increasing dramatically, which is very difficult to be handled with the current e-waste collection scenario, in addition, there are no strict rules and regulations for managing the e-waste and the financial flow of the e-waste. The simulation results show that the improved model is more efficient than the current collection model in terms of the amount of e-waste collected and the cost of the collection.

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