While I pity the residents who are directly affected by the Broga incinerator saga, I want to warn Malaysians that we must change our habits or risk falling into the same dilemma that they currently face.

Malaysians are a wasteful bunch. We cannot go living in our own sweet world because reality will catch up and you too will see an incinerator in your backyard.

We cannot go on blaming the government for bad waste management and assume that our responsibility ends there. After all, who threw the rubbish in the first place?

Here's a list of what we can do to help deal with the waste problem in this country:

1) Recycle

How many Malaysians actually recycle or even separate their rubbish at home? The truth is harsh - very few.

The Japanese sort out recyclable material and put it in different coloured bags. Those who fail to do so are scoffed at.

In Australia, every house is given three bins by their local council - for general waste, paper products and plastics/glass and anything else that can be recycled. Most offices have bins where office paper is discarded and collected once a week for recycling.

In Malaysia, people laugh at the government's recycling campaigns, throw rubbish into recycling bins and then make a big hullabaloo when a landfill or an incinerator is about to be built.

2) Buy recycled items only

Everyone has to play their part by changing our habits and buying recycled items. But how many check whether their cereal box is made from recycled paper? How many still buy food from vendors who use styrofoam containers?

Every little bit that can't be recycled or did not come from a recycled source means an extra burden on our landfills and more pressure on our government to do something about it. I

If we learn to say 'no' to the nasi lemak seller who uses styrofoam containers, he'll switch to a safer paper-based alternative.

3) Re-use

Think before accepting plastic bags when shopping, and develop a habit of re-using these.

If every plastic bag weighed 1 gram and 10 million Malaysians re-use plastic bags daily, we would save 10 tonnes of rubbish from getting to our landfills. Multiply this by 365 days and we would avoid creating 3,650 tonnes of rubbish.

No amount of catchy songs or government campaigns can help Malaysians if they don't change their mentality towards waste management.