Community engagement and waste management policy: A comparative analysis

Abstract

Municipal waste management has become a significant problem in many urban areas where solutions are complex and conflicting to form. One of the most important actors that can control waste management in a country is the government. Then the most important tool for setting standards in maintaining waste management is the public policy. Therefore, this paper will review and evaluate public policies that regulate solid waste management in China, Japan, and Malaysia, using secondary data. The three countries were chosen because their cases represented various significant and different factors that have often been an obstacle to waste management. The three case studies discuss community behavior analysis, policy mistranslation, and the lack of waste management infrastructure. The main obstacles of the waste management policy are to control people’s behavior, lack of garbage infrastructure, waste pickers are not organized, and lack of progress in waste management and recycling technology. The waste management policy needs to focus on increasing residents’ awareness to recycle and expand the producer’s responsibility to increase community engagement and boost successful waste management in a region or country.