Giving Waste a Second Chance: Public Awareness and Youth Empowerment

Overpopulation is no doubt worldwide concern as it brings different problems to urbanization process as well as environment. Waste is number one side product of overpopulation. Waste generation is ever increasing in both urban and suburban area and has led to many environmental issues. Many of the waste generated have potential to be transformed into value added products. By recycling, reusing and re-purposing these wastes, we are actually reducing the amount of waste produced and at the same time helping to solve waste disposal problem as many of the wastes exhibit strong energy producing potential. Overpopulation may be an issue of its own; nonetheless, it also provides us an army of human power in tackling environmental issues. Population is a valuable asset. The potential of that amount of man power, especially youth, combining with various awareness campaigns and 3R campaigns introduced by government and NGO are important in targeting these problems.