KUALA LUMPUR: A centralised waste park will be set up to process and recycle plastic waste in every state, Housing and Local Government Minister Zuraida Kamaruddin said today.
Any plastic waste recycling factory outside of the designated area will be declared illegal once the centralised waste park is operational, she said.
“By placing all plastic waste factories in a centralised waste park, we (ministry) can monitor and manage clean plastic waste imports better. That’s the way forward,“ Zuraida said in reply to a question by Che Abdullah Mat Nawi (PAS-Tumpat).
“Any factory outside this designated area will be considered as an illegal factory.”
She also said her ministry is working with the Customs Department to inspect each container entering the country so that only clean plastics are allowed to be brought in.
The ministry is in talks with state governments on suitable locations for the parks. It is also assessing landfills to be converted into waste parks.
There are also plans for each state to have a waste-to-energy (WTE) park, with larger states requiring more than one.
Each WTE plant will require a land size of between 4.04 and 8.09 hectares.
Zuraida said the federal government would engage with the state government on land allocation if the states do not have enough land to fit a WTE plant.
