Community Initiative (5) - Recycling

I was invited to attend the 5th Anniversary Thanks Giving Dinner organised by the Pertubuhan Amal Seri Sinar (PASS) last night. Altogether, more than 500 people attended the dinner in which RM 154,000 was raised and redistributed to 564 poor students from 20 over schools in Malaysia. This is a dinner for charity function.

Pertubuhan Amal Seri Sinar started five years ago to involve in the recycling activities with the believe that waste is wealth. It is now became the organisation with the largest recycling service network in Malaysia. Over five years, more than 50,000 tonnes of waste has been collected and recycled, over RM 500,000 was donated to the charitable homes. More importantly, by recycling 50,000 tonnes of rubbish is tantamount to help the Government to save RM 6 millions in solid waste management. According to Dato' Eadon Chin, its' founder the success of PASS is due to the holistic and systemic approach in handling the recycling process. He decided to do it enterprisingly after noticing that many of the NGOs failed to sustain after some time due to capacity problems. Many NGOs have started well as a handful of the members are eagerly of doing something good, but discontinue or loss interest whenever the members leave or encountered difficulty or poor response. His experience vindicated a structure and business way of doing recycling.

Another important milestone to share is making recycling as easy as possible by locating bins in various strategic locations. More than 150 bins are placed in different localities to facilitate people on disposing unwanted items as well as on site schedule collection and door service to pick up bulky waste are provided. It works well as people have no reason of not disposing the unwanted items into the bins closer to their home or work place. It is also a marketing strategy to promote PASS and 3R as it is so visible that nobody can miss the orange colour bins.

For an effective implementation of 3R programmes for the community at large, those who has not started yet, innovation out reach programmes focusing on convenience is critical. Perhaps, the days to wait at community recycling centre for residents to come by might have to revolve.