Protect Coral Reefs in Malaysia

Tioman Island produces a lot of waste glass – mainly food condiments glass bottle and alcoholic drinks glass bottle. Glass is not biodegradable and has to be heated up to 1,500 degrees to be recycled. In addition, there is colour separation – bottles of different colours cannot be mixed. Together with limited end market usage for glass, low reselling price and production cost, many recyclers on mainland focus on materials that give them the most returns, like plastic and aluminium. As a result, waste glass from Tioman Island is not sent out to mainland for recycling. Other factors that glass is not sent out are that it is bulky, heavy and is hard to handle in terms of transportation and logistics, which means transporting it costs a lot.

While plastic, aluminium and electronic wastes are sent out to mainland for recycling, waste glass on Tioman Island is cleaned and then crushed with glass crushing machine on the island – a project spearheaded by Reef Check Malaysia in collaboration with Rumah Hijau. The crushed glass is then used with cement for construction projects on the island, reducing the consumption of natural resources such as sand. The crushed glass is also used with cement to build coral block – with glass bottles cemented in the coral block as attachment site for broken live corals, for coral rehabilitation programme on the island. The repurposing of waste glass into construction and reef rehabilitation materials not only minimise greenhouse emissions and reduce wastes going to incinerator but also provide substrate for broken live corals to attach on and continue to thrive.  

Reef rehabilitation is the act of partially or, more rarely, fully replacing structural or functional characteristics of an ecosystem that have been diminished or lost, to a close approximation of its condition prior to disturbance. It is important to understand that this activity needs to be looked at in the context of the wider landscape, whereby the rehabilitation activity is integrated as a part of the existing ecosystem, and not creating a new one. It is important to note that there is no point rehabilitating coral reef unless the local stressors that were the original reason for the decline are addressed. Reef rehabilitation should therefore go hand in hand with rigorous management.

On Tioman Island, reef rehabilitation is part of an on-going conservation activities carried out by Reef Check Malaysia under its Cintai Tioman programme. The rehabilitation programme is more of an emergency response system to address physical impacts to corals such as anchor damage, storm damage and physical damage caused by divers/snorkellers. This system has responded to many incidents, saving many corals.

Live broken coral fragments (regardless of growth form and species) are collected from the surrounding reefs and attached to substrate made either from iron bar or cement block and recycled glass bottles. Many of these coral fragments were on the seabed and thus partially bleached (the side resting on the sand). Without attachment to a solid substrate, these corals would, over time, be abraded by natural water circulation and die.