The Role of the Guidelines for Packaging, Labelling and Storage of Scheduled Wastes: The Case Study at IIUM Kuantan Campus.

Abstract

This study focuses on determining the standardized guideline and its contents used for the management of scheduled wastes generated at IIUM Kuantan Campus. The rapid development of Malaysia has introduced a new threat to the environment in the form of scheduled wastes. The Department of Environment (DoE) introduced the "Guidelines for Packaging, Labelling and Storage of Scheduled Wastes in Malaysia" which covers notifying, storage, packaging and labelling. This study aims to determine the standardized guideline and its contents used for the management of scheduled wastes generated at IIUM Kuantan Campus. To accomplish this study, outlining, extracting and summarising the government-issued guideline was conducted. A survey questionnaire based on the guideline was also distributed to 13 scheduled waste handlers to assess their compliance. The result covers the summarised guideline used for this study. The guideline released by the DoE outlined the procedures for the matter of packaging, labelling and storage of generated scheduled wastes. For packaging, the guideline described methods to determine waste characteristics and appropriate container selection. For labelling, it detailed the hazard pictogram symbols, their names, symbol colour and background colour required for scheduled wastes label. For storage, it specified that containers should be placed on pallets with specific stacking limits and inventory records must be maintained. The survey results revealed that overall, 61.5% of participants scored 'Poor' while 38.5% scored 'Fair', with no participant achieving 'Good', indicating a significant gap between the established guidelines and actual practice. This study achieved its objective as the summary of the guideline was extracted and summarised to cover on the packaging, labelling and storage of the scheduled wastes, which was then used to create the survey questionnaire.