Environmental sustainability framework for 1 plastic waste management - A case study in 2 Bubble Tea 3 Streets of SS15, Subang Jaya

Economic growth and rapid industrialisation have led to enormous increase in municipal solid 26 waste (MSW) in the urban areas. Lack of waste management alternatives and ineffective waste 27 policy implementation are the major challenges for government to materialise a sustainable 28 solid waste management framework, especially for plastic waste. Booming bubble tea industry 29 has aggravated the situation by generating more plastic waste which are either non-recyclable 30 or rejected by recycling facilities as they have low or no economic values. Hence, this study 31 aims to evaluate the overall environmental performance of existing and alternative waste 32 management technologies that are available in Malaysia based on net greenhouse gas (GHG) 33 emission in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent per tonne of plastic waste that are analysed 34 through life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. Waste management technology with better 35 environmental performance is taken into account in environmental sustainability framework 36 development for plastic waste management based on the case study in Bubble Tea Streets of 37 Subang Jaya. Two scenarios of waste management technologies are considered: (A) sanitary 38 landfill; (B) waste to energy (WTE) incineration. Results showed that Scenario B (WTE 39 incineration) is more environmentally preferable as it has a negative net GHG emission of - 40 573.80 kg CO 2 -eq as compared to GHG emission of existing sanitary landfill (566.15 kg CO 2 - 41 eq.). Negative net GHG emission in WTE incineration is mainly due to higher GHG saving 42 achieved through cleaner electricity generation as compared to conventional power production. 43 This proposed alternative technology has the potential to reduce the dependence on landfills 44 and is served as the basis of framework development. The environmental sustainability 45 framework for plastic waste management can be baseline for the local authorities or policy 46 makers for other plastic waste generation hotspots other than bubble tea industry to improve 47 plastic waste management via WTE incineration. 48


Introduction
its operation in 2021 (Aziz, 2020). As a result, plastic waste from bubble tea industry will still 121 ended up in the landfills. Therefore, all these factors have hastened the government's plan to 122 begin operation of WTE incinerator as soon as possible to tackle the increasing plastic waste 123 issue.

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It is also well noting that only 10 out of the 166 landfills in Malaysia are sanitary landfills with 125 landfill gas recovery system (LGRS) which lead to serious global warming issue (KPKT, 2015). 126 As Malaysia has yet to begin operation of any WTE incinerator and therefore, the Malaysia is approximately 45 % will lead to ineffective incineration process. However, non- plastic products such as packaging plastics often consist of more than a single type of plastic 176 grade, which are usually termed as mixed plastics, adding more difficulties in sorting and 177 recycling these plastics. Besides this, production of biodegradable plastics is very low, which 178 is only one percent of global plastic production. Plastic products from grade one and two which 179 are widely recycled can only be recycled once or twice and recycling processes often produce 180 plastic products of lower quality and these products will eventually ended up either in the landfills or incinerators (Ritchie and Roser, 2018    Please take note that plastic cup waste is termed as plastic waste in this study. There is no 253 consumption of energy and emission during milk tea consumption by customer and material 254 (plastic cup) is similar as input and output. Therefore, no inventory data analysis and impact 255 assessment are conducted for this particular phase.  Eq. 1 calculates total electricity consumption of 26 bubble tea shops in Subang Jaya: Eq. 2 calculates CO2 emission from the total electricity consumption of these bubble tea shops:

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Inventory data as equation inputs related to production of bubble milk tea is tabulated in 285 Table 3.  Jaya to the landfill site as shown in Fig.3, the total two ways distance is 72.40 km and the diesel 295 consumption is estimated as 10.14 litres for distance of 72.40 km (Transport, 2020).
Inventory data as equation inputs related to waste transportation is tabulated in Table 4. Based on GHG result tabulated in Table 8 and plotted in Fig.4 is still a main concern as emission of 1 kg of CH4 is equivalent to emission of 28 kg CO2 into  New study has found out that CH4 emission from plastic waste has continued at night once the 361 plastic waste is exposed to ambient solar radiation and the exposed aged plastic will release  Based on Table 9   the study is to focus on reduction of GWP attributed by these two potent GHGs.

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In the incineration process, combustion of plastic waste under high temperature generates huge 433 amount of CO2 which contributes significantly to global warming and rapid climate change.  The role of waste management company is to keep the discharged CO2 as low as possible in 513 order to comply with the stringent regulation set by the Department of Environment (DOE).

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With the financial support from government, further upgrades can be done on the existing 515 advanced air pollution control system which are featured in the WTE incinerator to further 516 reduce the GHG emission coming out from the chimney.

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The proposed environmental sustainability framework for plastic waste management in Subang 518 Jaya can be further visualised in Fig.7. The framework highlights on the role of each party to 519 manage and reduce the GHG emission associated with plastic waste. The framework also 520 suggest alternative ways to reduce the use of plastics.

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The dataset used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the author on 565 reasonable request.

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No fund/grant is received for the current study.