MPC promotes awareness on circular economy practices to industry
KUALA LUMPUR: The industries are urged to embark on Circular Economy (CE) practices as an integrated development concept for long term economic growth, environmental protection and social inclusiveness.
According to Deputy Director General of MPC, Zahid Ismail, the CE is beyond just a waste management and recycling.
“It is an economic model with an objective to produce goods and services in sustainable way, by minimising the consumption and waste of resources as well as the production of waste.
“It represents a systematic shift that builds long-term economic resilience, generate new businesses and economic opportunities, and provides environmental and societal benefits,” he said.
A baseline study conducted by MPC indicates that only 10 per cent of the respondents are well aware of CE principles or practices, while only 44.7 per cent shows a low level of awareness on the circular economy practices.
More than 1000 companies from manufacturing sector were invited via email and mail to participate in the survey, however only 140 companies responded. The study also captures the CE initiatives undertaken by these companies in the last three years where result shows that waste minimization efforts were carried out through recycling, reusing waste or selling waste to another company appears to be the most common practices undertaken by the companies.
Other CE practices identified are re-planning of the way water is being used, using renewable energy, re-planning of energy usage, redesigning products and services, practicing green procurement of raw materials are also common among the companies and these practices are currently on-going.
Zahid said, currently MPC is developing a Business Sustainability Assessment (BSA) tool to help company in conducting a self-assessment and assessing the maturity level of resource utilisation within the company in relation to four dimensions, namely economic performance, environmental performance, social performance and technological performance.
“Each dimension is divided into five categories consisting offive5 qualitative questions for each category. In total there are 80 questions covering the 4 dimensions.
“Currently, the BSA tool is at the stage of being reviewed, pilot test and validated by many parties especially the industry players, academician, assessors and auditors before it can be used”.
“I truly need support from the industry players particularly those from the manufacturing sector to provide their feedback and comments when we contact them for pilot test of the BSA tool.
“The instrument consists of qualitative questions and the maturity level assessment based on ISO15504 where company is being assessed using scale with minimum ‘1’ to maximum ‘4’” he said.