KUALA LUMPUR: Landasan Lumayan Sdn Bhd (LLSB), a Menteri Besar Selangor (Incorporated) subsidiary, has inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with The Ocean Cleanup to establish a river plastic waste sorting facility along the Klang river.
The establishment of the facility, which is held in collaboration with Coca-Cola Malaysia, aims to propel end-to-end river cleaning solutions with circular economy objectives in the country.
The sorting facility, which falls under the Selangor Maritime Gateway (SMG) project, will host The Ocean Cleanup's first purpose-built sorting facility in Malaysia, especially for plastics.
The in-house set-up will pre-sort waste collected from Interceptor 002, as an initial site, with LLSB stepping in as the operator.
The Ocean Cleanup will also assist in developing and adapting appropriate waste management strategies over the next three years where it is expected to be operational by the first quarter of 2024.
LLSB's managing director, Syaiful Azmen Nordin, said the sorting facility represents a pivotal step in the commitment towards the reduction of plastic waste to landfills through targeted waste management strategies.
"This will be our first concrete and long-term effort to establish a circular economy under SMG's Integrated Water Resources Management solution for Klang river," he said.
Meanwhile, The Ocean Cleanup's founder and chief executive officer, Boyan Slat, said the Dutch non-profit organisation's broader mission is to tackle 1,000 global rivers to stem 80 per cent of the river plastic pollution flow to oceans. It is also satisfied with waste removal efforts and efficient model testing achieved in Klang River with LLSB.
"We must keep waste, especially plastic from entering the environment again, either by creating durable new products or processing it otherwise.
Therefore, working with LLSB to set up this sorting facility is a natural extension of our ongoing relationship in cleaning the Klang River to eventually bridge the gap between trash collection and repurposing.
The Ocean Cleanup aims to learn from this collaboration to reduce trash to landfills and enhance plastic recycling efforts, in the future."
Coca-Cola Asean and South Pacific Sustainability and Partnerships director, Kirsten van Zandwijk, said they have worked collaboratively with The Ocean Cleanup for more than two years towards the shared goal of helping eliminate waste from rivers.
"As part of our partnership, we're furthering our support in Malaysia to help develop better waste management solutions for the material collected via Interceptor 002.
"We hope the learnings from this model could be replicated across other interceptor deployments we support in Southeast Asia."
The current Klang river cleaning solutions consist of two Interceptors and seven logbooms, which have already seen the removal of 88,411 metric tons of waste from 2016 to August 2023, along 56 kilometres of the Klang river.
As SMG moves into Phase 2 of the project, its main objective is to drastically minimise such waste to landfills, with a paradigm shift where waste is repurposed. This will extend its lifecycle and contribute to a more sustainable future for the state and country.