Green tech solution to river waste needed

OVER the final 5 years in Selangor alone, greater than 67,000 tonnes of river waste ended up in landfills from only one river, Sungai Klang.

In the meantime, municipality waste within the state in 2020 stood at nearly two million tonnes.

With no restoration resolution, we are going to quickly run out of land to accommodate the trash.

Selangor Maritime Gateway, a Selangor authorities undertaking to rejuvenate Sungai Klang, is due to this fact trying right into a viable resolution to repurpose the waste it’s extracting from the river and provides it new worth.

To attain this, Malaysia’s start-ups, social enterprises and social innovators are being challenged to provide you with methods as to “how we will use inexperienced innovation to develop a breakthrough know-how to transform river waste right into a useful sustainable product with business worth”.

This downside assertion kinds the idea of the undertaking’s Innovation Problem: Upcycling River Waste to Wealth, which was launched lately along with Malaysian Global Innovation & Creative Centre (MaGIC).

“We’re in search of a brand new waste-to-product know-how that may rework Selangor’s river waste into worth streams, thus making a round financial system of what we presently register as trash, ” mentioned Syaiful Azmen Nordin, who’s managing director of Landasan Lumayan Sdn Bhd (LLSB), which is remitted to handle the undertaking.

Aside from cleansing and rehabilitating 56km of Sungai Klang (from Mid Valley Megamall to the river mouth in Port Klang), the Selangor Maritime Gateway can be trying into repurposing river waste.

That is according to the state authorities’s inexperienced know-how and waste restoration agenda.

The Innovation Problem has two key objectives:

• Develop a know-how resolution that may kind and convert the natural waste and/or stable waste into a brand new useful resource.
• Utilizing the know-how, to create a brand new useful product that has business worth, whereas being environmentally pleasant and sustainable.

“The answer we search should assist us divert river trash from landfills and must be adaptable to upcycling trash from every other river on the planet in addition to be appropriate for municipality trash, ” Syaiful mentioned, including that this initiative would assist drive Malaysia’s dedication to recycling 25% of its complete waste by 2025.

The most effective candidates with essentially the most tenable options could obtain money prizes from a RM50,000 seed fund pool to refine their know-how and qualify to speed up their impact-driven options by way of MaGIC’s new Social Impact Challenge Accelerator (SICA) three-month capacity building programme.

SICA is a platform (www.mymagic.my/sica) that assembles high potential innovators to accelerate their impact model development for greater market rollout.

The best performing team may then earn exclusive access to customised post accelerator support, including up to RM100,000 in grant and/or in-kind support from the Selangor Maritime Gateway, plus network access, exclusive attachments and mentorships with relevant government and non-governmental organisations, as well as the opportunity to tap into the government’s procurement via Program Perolehan Impak Sosial Kerajaan (PPISK).

“We’re glad to carry on board the Selangor Maritime Gateway in that includes an issue assertion that seeks to nurture technology-driven options that shield our rivers from air pollution and convey nice advantages to the communities round Sungai Klang, ” mentioned performing acting MaGIC chief executive officer Amiruddin Abdul Shukor.

“Due to this fact, we invite all impact-driven business enterprises to submit commercially-driven options in addressing the issue assertion by the undertaking, ” he added.

Be taught extra about this problem and apply to take part at www.selangormaritimegateway.com/innovation-challenge-2/.