Abang Wahap addresses the DBKU monthly assembly.
KUCHING: Kuching North City Commission (DBKU) aims to reduce waste going to the landfill by 50 per cent in 2017.
Kuching North Datuk Bandar Datuk Abang Abdul Wahap Abang Julai said although it is a tall order as the population
continues to grow, DBKU is taking various steps to achieve the goal.
“Starting from last year, we have been trying to educate people about two things. One is the 3Rs – reduce, reuse, recycle – and home composting,” he told reporters after DBKU’s monthly assembly yesterday.
Abang Wahap said DBKU has been going to schools, suraus and mosques to promote recycling, by providing them with recycling bins.
“In addition, seven areas are already doing home composting, where waste from kitchens are kept and left to decompose to be used as fertiliser later. This is so that food waste is not simply dumped into bins. All these are part of public education that is under the Cantik (Beautiful), Bersih (Clean), Selamat (Safe) plan,” he said.
Abang Wahap pointed out that the idea is to separate waste at the source — households.
“However, sometimes it is difficult to separate waste at home. Even when people separate their waste, there will be unscrupulous people who are out to make money out of this.
“So we thought why not let the community gang up together and get their rubbish collected and separated and they will benefit from it. Our task is getting the community to be ready for the idea as the culture is not there yet. We will intensify our programmes next year,” he said.
He added that DBKU is also considering charging for excess waste, which other councils have yet to implement.
“We want to penalise people. You pollute, you pay. Each household is given only one bin. You can only throw away this much rubbish into the bin each week.
“So if you produce more waste than the capacity of the bin, we will charge you by the weight. Of course, we don’t want to be drastic so we want to educate people first,” he said.