Residents in Padawan areas encouraged to practise waste separation at home

Residents in Padawan areas encouraged to practise waste separation at home

KUCHING, March 21: Padawan Municipal Council (PMC) is encouraging households under its jurisdiction to start separating their waste from the point of generation to minimise waste and to create a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

To make recycling at home more convenient, the council and Trienekens (Sarawak) Sdn Bhd introduced a six-month pilot project on kerbside recycling collection service at Jalan Semaba last December.

PMC chairman Lo Khere Chiang, during a site visit to review the progress of the project today, reminded the residents to take advantage of this service.

“As a community, we definitely can do more to reduce waste and improve the household recycling rate in our city. The service is not only convenient but it also helps to minimise waste pollution in the neighbourhood.

“As we all know, littering and indiscriminate dumping are becoming serious issues in certain parts of the city. One of the ways we can prevent this is by taking advantage of the available waste disposal and recycling services provided by the council and Trienekens,” he added.

The kerbside recycling collection service, he elaborated, enables house owners to manage their waste responsibly and have them collected right at their doorstep based on fixed schedules.

Trienekens’ group chief executive officer (CEO) Stephen Chin pointed out that since its launching, about 10 per cent of households in Jalan Semaba participated in the pilot project.

“This is very encouraging, and we hope more residents will participate in this project as several more collections are already scheduled in the coming months. In total, the project has managed to collect about 1,300 kg of recyclables,” he revealed.

Chin encouraged the residents to continue taking part in the kerbside collection initiative as they could be rest assured that all their recyclables would be managed and recycled safely without harming the environment.

Currently, the kerbside recycling collection is carried out twice a month, and it includes the collection of household e-waste, aluminium, plastic, steel, paper and cardboard.

Normal household waste disposed of in green bins were still collected twice weekly, according to the housing estate’s regular schedule.

Under the project, residents are required to separate their household waste and pack their recyclables in used plastic bags or boxes, marked with the stickers to indicate that the contents are for collection.

The packed recyclables are then to be left outside the residents’ houses ready for collection.

Lo lauded and thanked Jalan Semaba residents, including the Jalan Semaba Community Association, for their forward-thinking, environmentally conscious mindset and positive participation in making the recycling practice a normal part of their daily lives.

He hoped more households would embrace the recycling habit in future.

For more information about the project, Jalan Semaba residents are advised to call Trienekens’ Hotline at 082-612300. — DayakDaily March 21, 2019