Citation: Cheng, K.M.; Tan, J.Y.; Wong, S.Y.; Koo, A.C.; Amir Sharji, E. A Review of Future Household Waste Management for Sustainable Environment in Malaysian Cities. Sustainability 2022, 14, 6517. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14116517 Academic Editors: Orlando Troisi, Anna Visvizi, Wadee Alhalabi, Shahira Assem Abdel Razek and Paolo Gerli Received: 7 April 2022 Accepted: 17 May 2022 Published: 26 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review A Review of Future Household Waste Management for Sustainable Environment in Malaysian Cities Kin Meng Cheng 1 , Jia Yue Tan 1 , Shen Yuong Wong 2 , Ah Choo Koo 1, * and Elyna Amir Sharji 1 1 Faculty of Creative Multimedia, Multimedia University, Cyberjaya 63100, Malaysia; 1181400704@student.mmu.edu.my (K.M.C.); 1161100234@student.mmu.edu.my (J.Y.T.); elyna.amir@mmu.edu.my (E.A.S.) 2 Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Xiamen University Malaysia, Sepang 43900, Malaysia; shenyuong.wong@xmu.edu.my * Correspondence: ackoo@mmu.edu.my Abstract: In recent years, Malaysia has faced environmental challenges caused by municipal solid waste, especially household waste, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among all the household waste, plastic and paper are the most unmanaged waste that cause environmental issues. Several recycling associations in Malaysia have carried out their practices for better waste sustainability and management to curb the increasing amount of household waste. However, the effectiveness is still vague in achieving smart and effective household waste management. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate Malaysia’s household waste management, mainly in three significant municipalities in Malaysia, namely Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Melaka, in becoming a resilient and sustainable city by addressing two main research questions: (1) What are the key factors for ensuring the more successful moves for future household waste management in cities? and (2) How do each of the three municipalities of Malaysia cities address their waste issues based on the key factors from RQ1? This paper reviewed 13 waste management articles and explores the potential of the four factors of waste management from the perspective of technology and data, economy, social, and governance. The discussed factors and models contributed to an integrated future-proofing framework that focuses on smart waste tracking, a gamified awareness education, and strict policies to control waste management are the way forward for the future of smart cities household waste management. Keywords: household waste; household waste management; sustainable city; integrated waste management model; Malaysia cities 1. Introduction Municipal solid waste (MSW) is the waste generated, collected, transported, and dis- posed of within the jurisdiction of a municipal authority [1,2]. For example, MSW generally consists of biodegradable materials (food, paper, organic waste), non-biodegradable materi- als (plastics, metals, polystyrene foam), hazardous materials (oil, batteries, paints, e-waste), or construction waste [3,4]. The management of solid waste is the most significant task faced by the authorities in developing nations’ small and major cities, and the municipal waste management budget has increased due to the increasing generation of such solid waste. Household waste, which is the ‘garbage’ or ‘trash’ generated by the domestics, contributes to part of the MSW. The world currently generates 2 billion tons of household waste per year, containing more than 60 tons of waste every second [5]. According to [6]. an estimation showed that Malaysia would generate more than 25,000 tons of household waste per day as urbanization and the population increase rapidly. The increasing amount of unmanaged household waste that consists of kitchen, organics, and inorganic components that emit greenhouse gases (GHGs) [7] have led to a climate crisis such as an amplification of extreme weather and is directly linked to severe flood, e.g., Zhengzhou’s flood that causes damage to 9000 homes or equivalent to the loss of Sustainability 2022, 14, 6517. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116517 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability