The role of religious community in recycling: Empirical insights from Malaysia

Optimism in the power of religion to create large-scale and deep-seated ecological transformation plus the strong religious socio-demographics of the country has encouraged policy ideas in enhancing the role of religious communities in the adoption of environmental practices in Malaysia. However, these are mostly discussed at the theoretical and conceptual level with little systematic empirical observation on the ground. Moreover, discussion on the role of religious communities in municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is extremely limited in the mainstream literature, with only a few exceptions. This paper is aimed at reducing this gap by providing early empirical evidence on the potential role of religious communities in enhancing public adoption of recycling as a form of environmental practice. From a set of successful cases in Malaysia, it was observed that the advantages such communities possess can be viewed in several ways: the systematic way in which they operate, their ability to conduct long-term recycling programmes, the advantages of using their institutional structure as a conducive platform for recycling activities, their multiple motivational drivers for recycling and their collective potential to expand their programmes to the broader community. Hence, the findings have shown that the potential role of religious communities in environmental practices, such as recycling, has to go beyond general idealism on the positive influence of religious values/ethics on environmental protection – but due emphasis also needs to be given to the characteristics of each religious community, and how these can be useful in supporting different aspects of a recycling programme.