Most factories already sell their metal scrap. The trouble is how: a dealer's scale, a dealer's grade, cash and no record. Meanwhile cardboard, pallets and stretch film often go into the general-waste bin. To earn more, keep each type of waste apart at the production line, and have every pickup weighed and logged. Then the rebate is one you can check.
Each kind of factory waste has its own route and its own record
A plant does not make one waste. It makes several, and each one leaves by a different route. Find your lines in this table.
| Material, and where it comes from | What happens to it | The record to keep |
|---|---|---|
| Steel and iron offcuts and swarf, from stamping and machining | Sold as ferrous scrap | Weight, grade and price of each pickup |
| Copper and aluminium offcuts, from machining and wiring | Sold by grade, each metal kept apart | Weight, grade and price of each pickup |
| Cardboard and cartons, from incoming packaging | Flattened, kept dry and recycled | Weight of each pickup |
| Wooden pallets and crates, from inbound goods | Reused, or recycled as wood | Count or weight of each pickup |
| Stretch film, from palletised deliveries | Recycled when clean and dry | Weight of each pickup |
| Clean plastic offcuts, from moulding lines | Recycled when kept apart by type | Weight of each pickup |
| General waste, from the canteen and sweepings | Goes to landfill | Photo, time and weight of each pickup |
| Scheduled waste, from maintenance bays and chemical stores | Taken by a DOE-licensed contractor | Consignment note for each pickup |
Not everything has a buyer. The first six rows can be sold, reused or recycled. General waste still goes to landfill, but with a record of every pickup. Scheduled waste is the legal name for hazardous waste. The Department of Environment (DOE) regulates it, and its rules are further down. A consignment note is the DOE record for each pickup of hazardous waste, signed at every handover.
Per kilogram, the metals sit at the top and cardboard at the bottom. As a guide for clean, separated material, grade A copper fetches RM35–50 a kilogram, ferrous scrap RM0.50–0.90 and cardboard RM0.20–0.35.
These are ranges, not quotes. The price moves with the market and with how clean the material is. A rebate is a share of that price, not all of it. Our recycling rebate guide has the full table and a sum you can fill in.
A scrap deal you cannot check is the first thing to fix
The dealer comes when called, weighs the pickup on their own scale, pays cash and drives off. It feels like found money. Look at what you do not get.
- No weight of your own. You take the dealer's scale on trust.
- No record of the grade. The dealer decides whether your offcuts are clean or mixed.
- No paper trail. Nothing ties the payment to the pickup, so finance cannot reconcile it.
CCL Impex shows what a record changes. It is a vegetable wholesaler, not a factory, but the problem was the same. Its previous recycler reported one total weight for the month. It paid RM800–1,000 a month against roughly 1–2 tonnes. CCL Impex could not see where that tonnage came from.
Then every collection was weighed, photographed and logged in GarGeon Connect, our online portal. Recyclables were separated at source too. Recycling rose to 5–6 tonnes a month. The monthly rebate rose to RM1,500–2,500.
We keep the same record for a factory. Each pickup is logged in GarGeon Connect with a photo, a timestamp and the weight. Through Recycle Solutions we sell your recyclables to vetted buyers and share the rebate with you. The weights are on the record, so you can check each payment against them.
If you run several plants, one partner can put every site on one contract, which we call total waste management. Our guide to waste across multiple sites covers the detail.
Ask the dealer you use today for five things in writing
You do not need us to start. Before the next pickup, ask your dealer for these:
A buyer who will not write these down is asking you to trust the total. Our guide to verifying your recycling lists six checks for any recycler.
Cardboard, pallets and stretch film often end up in the general bin
Metal gets sold because everyone knows it has a price. Packaging is light and bulky, so it often goes out with the canteen waste. You pay for that bin to be emptied, and nobody weighs what was in it.
The fix is at the line, not after collection. We do not sort your waste once it has left. A waste stream is one type of waste kept apart, such as cardboard or food. Your team keeps each stream clean from the start:
- A marked cage for each metal, so copper never lands in the steel.
- Cartons flattened and kept dry near the loading bay.
- Stretch film bagged on its own, clean and dry.
- Sound pallets stacked for reuse, and broken ones set aside as wood.
- Oily rags and chemical containers kept out of every one of these.
Packaging adds up. Signature Market is an e-commerce company, not a factory. In 2025 its site kept 68.598 of 93.09 tonnes out of landfill, or 73.69%. Most of that was carton.
Start small. Weigh one week of cartons and film before you change a bin. For the rollout, see our guide to source separation across sites.
Scheduled waste goes to a DOE-licensed contractor, never into the scrap cage
Some factory waste is scheduled waste under the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulations 2005. Five things to know:
- What counts. Spent lubricating and hydraulic oil, solvents, paints and inks, lead-acid and lithium batteries, electronic waste, and containers or rags contaminated with them.
- A mix counts too. A mix of scheduled and ordinary waste counts as scheduled waste. Keep it out of the general bin and the scrap cage.
- Who takes it. We do not collect or treat scheduled waste: where a site has it, a DOE-licensed contractor takes it, and we keep its records with the rest.
- Where to check the contractor. DOE's eSWIS list of licensed scheduled-waste facilities and transporters, at eswis.doe.gov.my.
- What to keep. The consignment note for each pickup, for at least three years.
There are two ways to start, and both begin with an audit
You do not have to drop your dealer to get a record.
Keep your dealer and collectors. GarGeon Connect goes on top of the vendors you use now. Their pickups show on one dashboard, which gives you one view and one report.
Hand us the collection. We arrange it through licensed partner collectors in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Johor. We share the rebate on your recyclables, and you get one contract and one invoice.
MLF Ingredients took the second route. It runs a processing plant in Pekan Nenas, Johor, and its waste ran on manual delivery orders and handwritten weight tickets. Now each collection and its weight appear in GarGeon Connect as they happen.
Either way, we start with a waste audit. The audit takes about a week: a site visit, then your baseline within days. It maps what each line throws away and marks what belongs with a scheduled-waste contractor. Our waste audit guide explains what it covers.
Our manufacturing page shows how this fits a factory. Our guide to waste management in Malaysia covers the rules and costs for every sector.
If your scrap leaves on a dealer's scale and your packaging leaves in the general bin, start with the record. Tell us what your lines make and who collects it today. We will begin with a waste audit. Book a consultation to get started.
