Cintai Mantanani

The waste management programme on the island has been making great progress. By mid-March, we had sent out two batches of waste, weighing a total of approximately 1,450kg, to mainland Kota Belud. The waste, consisting of all types of waste except food waste, was a result of the collection since December 2022.

Meanwhile, our Mantanani Plastic Recycling Centre (MPRC) sent out 33 bundles of compressed plastic and cans, weighing 336kg and 506kg respectively. These bundles were collected by a recycling company (GNC), which paid RM264.90 for the recyclables. The total cost of transportation of these recyclables alone came up to RM1120: RM120 for truck transportation from Kota Kinabalu; RM1,000 for boat rental to transport the materials to the mainland.

In the long run, such arrangements will prove to be ineffective, especially in terms of costs alone. We hope to find a better, sustainable solution to address this issue in the near future.

In mid-March, our team on the island held a community engagement session to update the local Mantanani islanders on the progress the waste management programme.

This session also served partially as an education session to enhance the awareness and understanding of the community towards the need of a proper waste management system on the island.

We had a good turnout of 56 families during the session, who were happy with the progress of this effort and thanked RCM for initiating it, while also stating their continued participation and support.  

Semporna

Our Sabah team also conducted two introductory workshops in Larapan and Mabul Island, to introduce a marine conservation training programme supported by the CIMB Foundation.

The main aim of this programme was to get 15 islanders each from both islands, trained with skills related to reef conservation: diving, reef health assessments (as EcoDivers), reef restoration, coral bleaching monitoring and mooring buoy installations.

The first session of this programme was an Open Water and Advanced Open Water diving course. 15 youths from Larapan Island and 10 youths from Mabul Island completed the Open Water dive course, while 5 Mabul youths completed the Advanced Open Water dive course.

Kota Kinabalu

Our colleagues are in the midst of introducing a waste management and recycling programme in Kg. Baru-Baru, Tuaran. To kickstart this programme, we organised a clean-up in Kg. Baru-Baru - collecting over 1,500kg of trash.

We then organised a waste management workshop and had a consultation session with the residents, gathering over 100 households who agreed to participate in this initiative. We then organised a site visit to Mantanani Island to brief the residents of Kg. Baru-Baru and demonstrate the waste management and recycling practices on Mantanani Island.