Development of a Microsoft Visual Basic for Municipal Solid Waste Management (Case Study: Permatang Pauh, Pulau Pinang)

Municipal solid waste has been considered as one of the most immediate and serious problems confronting urban government in most developing countries. In this few decades, the production of solid waste was increased by more than 91%. The authority of Malaysia has discovered 11,824 disorganized dumping sites in Pulau Pinang area. Thus, a decision support system was developed to manage the solid waste disposal via the use of Microsoft Visual Basic program. The existing guidelines are embedded within the proposed web-based program, so that practitioners or ordinary citizen can peruse the best management practice for solid waste management. The application was develop based on the questionnaires and interviews on the solid waste composition at the district of Permatang Pauh, Pulau Pinang. It was found that that food and plastic become the highest waste generated in Permatang Pauh followed by paper, bottle, aluminium and others. To accommodate these waste generation, the collection system using hauled container system (HCS) and stationary container system (SCS) was embedded in the application. In addition, the software gives decision on the time required per trip, picked up time per trip and number of trips waste collector per day.