Abstract
Population increase especially in the urban area Malaysia has been leading to rapid increase of municipal solid waste (MSW). This has also leads to the emergence of solid waste problem in urban area. Unfortunately, there has been great delay in taking action to countermeasure solid waste management (SWM) issues in the country. Iskandar Malaysia (IM), located in Malaysia most southern state of Johor is developed to become special economic zone under the Ninth Malaysia Plan. Within this large scale development plan, it is important to consider an alternative SWM that can substitute current SWM of total dependence on landfilling. However, basic information of generated waste – waste component, moisture content, and calorie value, is very limited and there is no available data on waste generation related to consumption expenditure. Waste characterization survey was conducted at Seelong Transfer station on household solid waste, according to Japan’s test procedure. Using “quartering” method, from 1000kg waste, 100kg were sorted into 27 physical components and 8 expenditure groups. From the total 100 kg of waste that were manually segregated at Seelong transfer station, main composition is food paper and plastic. The result also shows a close relationship with changing pattern in household expenditure of Malaysians.
