Food waste composting: a sustainable workable solution for food waste management in Malaysia / Assyanur Nasyrah Ishak ... [et al.]

Food waste has significant environmental consequences in addition to economic costs. Food waste consumes the resources necessary to grow, produce, and distribute it to customers, as well as emitting greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. The average monthly cost of treating food waste incurred by each Malaysian household is likely to increase from RM210 to RM400 by 2025 if food waste is not managed properly. Malaysians produce an estimated 24% or 4,046 tonnes of avoidable food waste out of 17,000 tonnes of food waste. Considering the severity of the situation, the main objective of this paper is to provide a solution to reduce food waste in Malaysian landfills by providing a workable and affordable food composting system to homes, restaurants and hotels. Food composting has various benefits where the compost can reduce or replace the use of chemical fertilizers. The successful implementation of food waste composting solutions can provide a positive impact to the environment, economy, and society directly and indirectly. This is a form of circular economy that would sustain the business and household and make it profitable and beneficial to the society and the environment in the long term. The proposed method involves several components, which are food waste separation, container for temporary storage on-site, compost pick up to be sent to a central compost facility, central compost facility, and distribution to farmers. For this solution to succeed, there are three aspects to focus on. Firstly, instilling awareness to get the buy-in from business owners and households. Other than that, the composting system must be cost-efficient and easy to use. Lastly, there should be concerted efforts from government, industry players and society to ensure the success of the project. To start the initiatives, the government can set a policy to encourage food composting such as subsidies and tax-cuts. And hotel and restaurants should invest in the project and involvement of society would accelerate the success of the implementation of this project.