Kota Kinabalu: Sabah collected 191,636kg of e-waste between 2016 and 2022.
Sabah Department of Environment Director Amirul Aripin said the e-waste collected were from the industrial sectors as well as used electrical and electronic goods.
“E-waste is carefully managed in accordance with the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Waste) Regulations 2005, which are enforced by the Environment Department.
“The management of e-waste involves collecting and disposing in an appropriate way, because it can be very dangerous and produce severe effects which threaten people’s health, such as cancer, and various other diseases,” he said, Tuesday.
According to Amirul, Sabah is among the first state to have an e-waste collection centre in Malaysia.
“In Sabah, we do this in collaboration with the local authority and our first collection centre is in Beaufort, which we opened in 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“However, it was started much earlier, but only officially operated in 2021,” he added.
He said Sabah now has seven e-waste collection centres and they hope to have more from time to time.
The seven centres are in Beaufort, Papar, Keningau, Kinabatangan, Kudat, Sipitang and Kota Kinabalu.
“We are also recognised by the Federal Government and have the attention from the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment.
“Collection at our e-waste centres is done every week in collaboration with the local authority, which involves government agencies as well as schools, villages and the community,” he said.
In addition, he said that the community’s response to the efforts is very encouraging.
He said the effort to promote and create awareness to the community is actively carried out by the Environment Department.
“We actively encourage such activities, especially with government agencies, which we are aware that there are a lot of electrical and electronic waste that if disposed of indiscriminately, will have a negative impact on our environment.
“In Sabah, we see and realise that e-waste has increased and the best step is to collect and dispose of them the right way,” he said.
He said the e-waste collection centres throughout the State only collects the waste which will then be sent to the peninsular for disposal purposes.
“We do not have anyone to dispose of them here, so what is collected will be sent to the peninsular for disposal,” he said.
“The Environment Department as the party responsible for providing awareness and encouraging the preservation and conservation of the environment, and for the disposal of e-waste we in Sabah have yet to have any investors here to do so.
“However, it is likely that in the future, there will be and usually investors will go into areas that are dense with dense such as manufacturing, where there are a lot of electronic and industrial equipment for example in Johor where there are a lot of factories,” he said.
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