World Bamboo Day Celebration

Malaysia celebrates the inaugural World Bamboo Day on 18 September 2012. World Bamboo Day is declared in Bangkok, Thailand in 2009 during the 8^th World Bamboo Congress (WBC).  There were 43 countries participated and the expedition continued successfully every year to date.

Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship Foundation (GIEF), Malaysian Timber Industry Board (MTIB), Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) and 1 Mont Kiara collaborated to run the World Bamboo Day celebration by fulfilling the event with exhibition, forums, bamboo design competition and a lot more activities. On 19 September 2012 YB Dato’ Hamzah Zainuddin Deputy Minister of Ministry of Plantation Industries & Commodities officially launched the Malaysia World Bamboo Day. From his speech he was optimistic that bamboo will be a part of biggest contribution to Malaysia plantation commodities if all related parties actively promote bamboo products and also set bamboo as the main building material.

As an example, some countries like Thailand has implemented bamboo as the main construction material for their building development i.e., Panyaden School in Chiang Mai. Panyaden School want to demonstrate environmentally mindful life that related to school vision to provide the student with an education and also peaceful and fulfilling way of life. Following images give us some views about this school. 

       

Celebrate Sustainably !

The team at SDMalaysia would like to wish all of you a Happy Hari Raya and Safe Holiday. It is the time of year we seek forgiveness from our friends and family. When having fun, bear in mind that we need to CELEBRATE SUSTAINABLY . So here are some tips on how you can do this:

1- Why change new money for duit raya if we can still use the old money? (Save the Trees please)

2-Have a virtual open house day (skype etc). Imagine the fuel we have save from traveling from one place to others.....

3- if you still want to go ahead (and we know why you want to do so), don't binge on the food please. we hope you will be able to celebrate the next hari raya in 2013 !

Maaf Zahir Batin from all of us here.....

Divination

So you have chosen to study Divination, the most difficult of all magical arts. I must warn you at the outset that if you do not have the Sight, there is very little I will be able to teach you. Books can take you only so far in this field.

-Sybill Trelawney-

Divination is a subject taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This subject teaches methods of 'divining' the future - or gathering insights into future events through various rituals and tools. The magic taught in this class, as well as the ability to say prophetic things is a branch of magic referred to as "divination."

We here at the office somewhat practice this art of 'divination' (yes, you heard it right, we are somewhat magical) - except we substitute that term with alternative and more-professionally-sound terminology - computational modelling.

Modelling in this context is a simulation approach to building design. In other words, we predict the performance of the building before it is built - this includes energy consumption, occupants thermal comfort, building thermal transfer value, electric and daylighting, indoor temperature and some other stuffs too.

For example, daylighting modelling means we predict how indoor daylighting will look like, in terms of graphics and amount of lighting available, inside the building. This building modelling is carried out using computer software, i.e. Ecotect, 3DS Max, Light Studio, Radiance - which I currently use as one of the modules in Virtual Environment.

It's no rocket science but I still think it's pretty cool.

So, give us a building design, preferably in proper architectural drawings. We'll run it down in our simulation program for whichever subject you wish to know. Should daylighting, for example, is your curiosity, we'll be able to tell you that how much area inside your building will receive good daylighting and also identify which part of that space criticially requires assistance from electric lighting. The objective of this exercise is to explore and maximize natural daylighting potential and optimize electric lighting design.

See basic sample below.

I choose Daylighting as the sample above because if I picked Energy Modeling instead, you'd just be seeing a table with a lot of numbers in it - which is fairly less attractive than the above shown image.

That's a bit of preview about what we do daily - well among other many things.  Perhaps, we're not that exactly different than a group of bomohs. Added with high-technology gadgets, with a magic bowl filled with clear flower-scented water, a bomoh will be able to tell you that, "Bangunan enchek nanti akan jadi sangat bagus, tapi mungkin sedikit panas. Kami cadangkan ambil tangkal ini, tanam kat belakang rumah enchek selama 2 bulan lengkap. Kemudian order la gelas dua lapis untuk ganti selapis gelas yang enchek guna untuk bangunan enchek tu. Pastu gali balik tangkal tu dan letak kat celah2 gelas tu nanti ye. Kompem sejuk elok seronok pengunjung datang,"

Yes, this is such a long entry just to say that - we do magic here.


--
NJB

A Hint of Paradise

GEDS just came back from a trip to Kuala Krai - literally just came back because I'm on a taxi heading back home from the airport.

We'll post something soon on the trip. In the mean time, a snapshot preview of what we thought as one of the most beautiful place on Earth.

Have a good week and a blessed Ramadhan!

TSGBCA 2012

ARCHIDEX is perhaps the biggest event for the architecture community in the country. It assembles professionals from the architecture, interior design and the building industry and industry leaders - providing platform to keep them updated on the developments in the built environment, mingle and network with captains of the industry, besides sourcing for innovative products, designs and services.

ARCHIDEX 2012 was held from 4-7 July at Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. In conjunction with the event, Tropical and Sub-tropical Green Building Alliance Conference (TSGBC) 2012 was held at the same venue. This was the third conference of its kind since October 2009, which was hosted by China Green Building Council.

TSGBCA is an alliance of green building councils (GBC) with shared interests in the environmental characteristics of the tropical and sub-tropical region. The GBC’s in this alliance are China, Singapore, Malaysia, Philipines, India, Indonesia and Australia. This third edition of the TSGBA 2012 conference celebrates the natural tropical environment and its inspiration to truly innovative design for the built environment. The main theme of the event was "Naturally Tropical Truly Innovative".

I was priviliged to be sent by GEDS to participate in this conference. It's an event about green buildings - of course I'm excited about it!

The first speaker of the conference was Ar. Boon Che Wee, Chairman of Green Building Index (GBI) Accreditation Panel. He updated the audience on the latest GBI certification status in Malaysia. There are currently 70 GBI certified buildings in the country. 

GEDS have delivered 2 GBI projects: Puteri Harbour in Nusajaya (GBI RNC Gold) and ASR Padu in Melaka (GBI NREB Certified)!!

Jane Henley, CEO of World Green Building Council, was there as well. She presented on the green building trend developing all around the globe. Malaysia falls under the Asia Pacific Regional Network. LEED is leading all green building certification tools with the largest number of buildings certified. BREEAM, DGBC, SB Tool and Green Star are among the other popular assessment tools.

She also highlighted an interesting point that the purpose of green building certification is different between countries – and sometimes can be very contradictory. For example, South Africa developed their green building industry to create more jobs. Green Mark in Singapore, instead, is to improve efficiency in works and reduce manpower. 

The rest of the main speakers in the conference include the followings:

1. Li Congxiao, Director CSUS Green Building on Green Building Assessment in China
2. Ar Tai Lee Siang on Urban Forestation in Singapore
3. Naning Adiwoso from Indonesia Green Building Council on Networking and Transformation
4. Rod Leaver, CEO of Lend Lease Asia on Green Sense – Cost to Value Mindset Shift
5. Tsou Jin Yeu from University of Hong Kong on Urban Eco-landscape Formation
6. Ken Yeang from TR Hamzah & Yeang on Biomimicry
7. Michael Budig from ETH Centre Singapore on Design of Robotic Fabricated High Rises

This would have been a novel (or a very lengthy blog entry) if I thought I gonna write a review for all speakers. Nevertheless, my personal favourite was the talk given by Professor Tsou Jin Yeu. He talked about GIS Overlap Analysis and its application on sustainable urban development. Perhaps it reached to me more because his works involve surface thermal monitoring on urban scale and that can provide valuable data for any energy modelling geeks, like myself. 

For example, we all know that it's good to have some landscape around a building. But no one knows how much good it actually brings. In typical green building certification process, credits are awarded if we preserve 20-30% of the land area with green landscape. However, it is unclear to what extent does that help us in terms of reducing the heat island impact.

The above presented system, the surface thermal monitoring on urban scale, can tell us that if you preserve 30% of your land area with green landscape, the outdoor temperature can be reduced by 4 degrees Celcius (if my memory served correctly) compared to no landscape area provisioned. This information can help ESD geeks, again such as myself, to strategize our landscape design and its direct contribution to the energy efficiency measures of the building. How cool is that? (I know it's so exciting!)

I shall stop now because it's starting to turn into a technical lecture. Call me up for coffee if you're interested to discuss about it. :)

There are other several separate mini sessions available throughout the conference. I would love to go to them all but that is only possible if I master the art of “Shadow Clone Jutsu” (my apologies to non-manga readers – it just means that I can duplicate myself to be at many places at the same time).

For more information on the conference, you can find at http://www.tsgbc2012.org.my/en/.

I have been to quite a number of green building conferences, seminars, talks in Malaysia (well, in KL mostly). It's encouraging to see more local case studies are coming up compared to the yester years where most stuffs were about overseas information. These local data were presented in the mini sessions, i.e. local GBI case studies, government policies, IEQ solutions for our own local tropical climate.

Although I personally find that the amount of local data is considerably small - we need more local researches! But the future is bright in the green building industry in Malaysia. We hope that more local researches and data shall come up soon in future green building events. 

And GEDS will be there soon - and we'll definitely let you know!

--

NJB

BECOMING A GREEN MEMBER IN FAMILY,

ISN’T SOMETHING THAT HAPPENS EVERYDAY

For more than 100 years, we have been use and produce waste from any types of material through household. BUT, is as easy as making changes to home activities and shopping habits, try these tips to get into green family.

1.  Buy food without polystyrene

Bring your own Tupperware. Polystyrene contains the toxic substances styrene and benzene, causing some toxins to be absorbed into our bloodstream and tissue.

2.  Focus on reduce rather than recycling

You can just use old clothes as wiping cloth rather than buy it.

3.  Find substitute for plastic grocery bag

Bring your own recycle bag which valuable at RM0.99 (giant) during shopping. Keep it in car for everyday use.

4.  Don’t buy mineral water bottle

Bring your own bottle instead of buying mineral bottle. Bottle water cost RM 3,500 times the price of tap water.

5.  Keep your sauce bottle as herbs container

Wash the sauces bottle before use. You can also do decoration to the container.

6.  Remember to recycling material such as food cans

Recycling food cans such as MILO and condensed milk can. Families with baby use a lot of milk cans.

7.  Make shoes box as your make up/cd storage

Give your room make over by reused shoes box as storage for makeup or stationery tools.

8.  Teach your kids about recycling

Yes definitely!!Teach them what type of material can be recycle and what the best is doing the activities.

9.  Don’t delay, start today

The most important is to have commitment to be green family, start today, not tomorrow or day after tomorrow.

10.  Shopping at GREEN market

They committed to encourage customer to go green.

Celebrities that goes green

Celebrities can be a role model as publics follows every tiny gritty detail of their lives. I personally think it is ingrained in most of the human brain that if they do it, then it must be cool and hip for us mere commoners to follow. Yes, celebrities have the power to change the world for a better place. Let see the list of celebrities who has embrace going green and being green.

1.    Jessica Alba

This mother of two has just launch a line of green baby and household product under her company; The Honest Company. The company’s products include designer biodegradable diapers, all-natural wipes, shampoo, baby lotion, laundry detergent, sunscreen, and more. Not only are the baby products safe and eco-friendly, they’re stylish with designs like lollipops and ice-cream on diapers for girls and little skulls-and-crossbones on diapers for boys.

2.    Leonardo Dicaprio

He is a committed environmentalist that drives hybrid cars and has solar panels installed at his house. In 2007, Leonardo wrote and produced a documentary film “The 11^th Hour” which focuses on global warming.

In 1998, he started the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to raise awareness of environmental issues. The Foundation works on a variety of environmental and humanitarian issues including Wildlife Protection, Forest Preservation, Healthy Oceans, Water Access, Renewable Energy, Disaster Relief and Climate Change.

3.    Rachel McAdams

A big fan of Rachel McAdams, I was pleasantly surprised to find out she helped launch the Green Is Sexy website that offer advice to those looking to live in a more sustainable and eco-friendly manner.

The site is fun and charming in its fresh and light-hearted takes on the issues at hand. As a woman, I find their tips in maximizing the use of make-up helpful. For example, the eyeliner — “once the pencil gets to a certain point, it becomes soft and difficult to sharpen. Instead of tossing it in the trash, try sticking the pencil in the freezer instead. After a couple minutes chilling out, your favorite black eyeliner will be ready for the sharpener and your hot date”.

Another simple tip is by switching your default font to Century Gothic. Apparently it could save you $20 a year in printer ink cartridges. Taken from their website, “Century Gothic uses about 30 percent less ink than Arial.  Considering more than 300 million ink cartridges are thrown away each year, reducing the amount of ink you use is good for the environment and great for your wallet.”

Guess what font am I using right now? ;)

So what are you waiting for? Click http://www.greenissexy.org/ for a dose of friendly advice by Rachel McAdams and her crews.

There are hundreds more environmentalist celebrities such as Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and even Richard Branson just to name a few. Next up, maybe we should look closer to home and look at our own Malaysian celebrities and their eco-achievement. Care to share who they are?

The 3Rs, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

As of the year of 2008, 23,000 tonnes of waste is produced each day in Malaysia, with less than 5% of the waste is being recycled. In Selangor alone, waste generated in 1997 was over 3000t/day and the amount of waste is expected to rise up to 5700t/day in the year 2017(Yachio Engineering, 2000 cited in Muhd Noor Muhd Yunus, 2000). An alarming 19% of waste ends up in our drains, which then causes flash floods and drainage blockage. This situation has been and will be reducing our environmental capacity to sustain life.

Solid waste affects climate change through landfill methane emission. The source of manmade methane gas is from the landfills themselves, which happens when organic waste is left to decay anaerobically.

The 3Rs, reduce, reuse and recycle were introduced to help on this matter. The no-plastic bag campaign is as one of the way to reduce the waste production. But that does not close the loop. Where other recyclable waste does goes. Shall we practice the reuse and recycle?

Those are some questions we may need to consider before throwing away anything to our bins. Let’s save our mother earth from get sinks with solid waste. I hope below picture helps in giving some tips.

See you soon in my next entries J

Palm Oil industry in Malaysia. Is it sustainable ?

 - Most of us cook our food using vegetable oil where the source mainly comes from palm oil, soy based & rapeseed.

- Malaysia and Indonesia are the top two world largest palm oil producers accounting for 85% or 42 million tonnes of the total world production last year

- According to the latest report:  "Malaysia is expected to run out of suitable land for new oil palm plantations in the next three to four years, while Indonesia will have another 10 to 12 years for the crop's acreage expansion"

- The palm tree in only plantable within the equator band

- With mature palm trees in Malaysia today will also reduce production level. Replanting is costly and will take time to get reach the optimum yield.

- In the context of sustainability of this industry: People, Planet and Prosperity, SD raises the following concern:

PEOPLE: Will we have enough fruit harvesters in our local plantation given the fact that majority of the plantation workers are Indonesians?

PLANET: Will we focus on Replanting or expansion growth outside Malaysia ?

PROSPERITY: The industry contributes at least 5 % of National GDP and employs more than 1.4 million people in the industry.  Should we now make a concerted effort in terms of moving up the value chain (e.g. downstream business & biofuel) in the industry.  This is all about the concept of having less (land) and getting more (value).  

Start ACTING now or we will be having more olive oil in our local delicacies instead :)

Dear FUTURE YAB Prime Minister,

To all Under 21 Year Old Malaysians,

The GENERAL ELECTION in MALAYSIA will happen very soon (at least that's what we are predicting at SDMalaysia ). As a responsible RAKYAT, you need to play your role to choose the future Government that will run our beloved country. BUT it doesn't stop there !

SDMALAYSIA knows that while government come and go, the RAKYAT should put in place a Government that looks into the well being of the country in the next General Election. By that, we would want a government that develops the country in a sustainable manner and consider the well being of the future generation.

Unfortunately, the law states that eligible voters in Malaysia must be above 21 year old. Ironically, it is the age group below 21 year old that will play the most important role to drive the country by 2020, the year when we aim to reach a developed state.

SDMALAYSIA is thinking outside the box and offering the voice of the future generation to be heard by the potential Wakil Rakyats. Here, we are offering Malaysians Under 21 Year Old of age to send us a letter to the  FUTURE PRIME MINISTER.

Your letter should in such a way express your hope on how the country should be run by the elected Government. We will choose the best letter and publish this in our blog.

You will start your letter with the intro: Salam YAB Prime Minister,
For the rest, we will let your creative juice flow........


As an incentive, SDMALAYSIA will post the best letter and reward RM 100/- cash to the individual. For all you know, this is the platform for you to meet the future PM himself :)

If you want to have your say in shaping the country; start writing the letter and send it to: Gmuitnys@gmail.com . Kindly include your name and Date of Birth for our reference.

Happy writing :)

Dr Muiz on National TV this morning !

As working people, we occasionally suffer from the Monday Blues. However, SDMALAYSIA thought that today is an exceptional case !

On Hello On Two (HOT), a daily English morning talkshow on TV2 (RTM), our very own Dr Muiz Murad was invited as a guest in the TV programme to share great insights on the Green Building subject matter. He was joined by two other guests (Mr. Ahmad Najib of GEDS Sdn Bhd & Mr Matthias Gelber aka The Greenest Man on Earth) . Those who saw him live this morning will vouch on the fact that he is VERY Passionate in championing the green building agenda in the Malaysian context.  

The most profound statement that he raised was on the distortion on perception made by many developers to target only certain group of affluent consumers when marketing green Properties. Unlike most developed countries, Malaysians of middle to lower income groups may not have the luxury to embrace sustainable living due to limited choices they have in the property market.

.
Not to be discouraged, he has provided various solutions to address this matter and shared his experiences in helping developers, local councils and other key stakeholders.  

SDMalaysia congratulates him for that EXCELLENT Breakfast talk this morning. This is definetely a great inspring way to start the week ! (Note: Next show BBC & Al Jazeera !)

subsidy is not sustainable and can make malaysians life shorter!

why do we love subsidy so much? for the simple reason that others bear our cost of the goods/ services we consume.

today, malaysians are blessed by the govt generosity to subsidise many items such as petroleum, gas and even sugar! well in actual fact the source of subsidy comes from the govt revenue coming from various sources. Petronas, the Fortune 500 oil company is one of the most significant cash cow for the govt. about 1million out of 28 mil malaysians pay income tax to the govt.

can subsidy ensure sustainability of the country?

if impelemented at the right target group, there is a strong chance this mechanism will lead to them improving their well being.

today, the subsidy is very much a blanket approach to satisfy the majority. for example, from the under priviliged to the upper class society, all will pay the same cheap fuel price for their cars. the number of cars on the road increases leading to other problems especially daily traffic jams in cities like kuala lumpur. sdmalaysia would be interested to know the productivity loss and drivers stress level contributed from this problem.

sugar too is a subsidised item leading to many of us consuming this item without caring for our health. world health organisation also reported that we malaysians dont regularly exercise.

sdmalaysia thinks thAt it is important that we remind each other on the downside of subsidy.

we want to be a developed nAtion hence it is time that we move away from the subsidy mentality. special targeted group should be taken care of but not the majority of us. as it is, only some of us who pay tax to ensure other ppls comfort.

say no to fuel and sugar subsidy for a sustainable malaysia, otherwise say yes to living a shorter lifespan thanks to the two cheap commodities!

Don't buy your next green property yet before you read this!

SDMalaysia thinks that sometimes, industry players tend to be very selfish when it comes to promote green agenda in the buiding sector.  There are two scenarios that will tend to take place when developers embark on new developement projects.

Scenario I: Old school developers that don't understand the importance of sustainability principles. Whilst they are considered a dying breed, you can't entirely blame this group since they genuinly don't know what they don't know. 

Scenario II: Introduce minimal green initiatives in project and use marketing ploy to charge consumers a bomb. Remember, Sustainability is more than promoting green concepts. The other 2 Ps (Profit and People) most often than not are compromised. We all know in Malaysia, sustainability measures in the construction industry is at a very dismal state. Just look at the condition of the of foreign workers employed by the most CONSTRUCTION companies. Most of them are living in hazardous environment and earn VERY low income (as a result of locals who perceived to shy away from the 3D; dangerous, dirty and difficult jobs).

So how will you know that when you buy your next property, the investment brings sustainable value for the overall 3Ps (Planet, People and Prosperity) ?

SDMalaysia is proud to announce that one of our key individual, Dr Nurul Muiz Murad will be making a special apprereace at the coming GreenBuild Asia 2012.

• Date : 15 February, 2012
• Time : 2.00 to 2.45 pm
• Venue : Seminar Room 1, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
• Topic :

A Cost Effective Way for Green Residential Green Development     

Make a date with Dr Muiz and be enlightened by the holistic understanding of Green Building from him :)

Malaysia Transformation: Can we really learn from others in 2012 ?

 

2012 will be very interesting time for all of us.  Many will continue to feel the pinch from the global economic crisis but some who demonstrate strong resilience and good discipline will emerge victorious !  For Malaysians, we should have high appreciation of the global trend to survive even at our very own backyard. This is the era of Global Village after all.  

SD malaysia believes america and europe are refocussing their effort to put the their economy back in order.

as a result, very strong tendency to fall back to the business as usual approach.

Green agenda that requires strong political will have to be put at the back burner.

Asia, particularly India and China will have the opportunity to strengthen their global presence. we just hope that wont take the short cut to achieve their dreams !

Middle East region has finally made the global news in terms of the change in political reform. This is a wake up call for them (and ALL of US) !

Latin America, relatively quiet but will have full of surprises....

Africa, can they keep up with the global pace to at least remain relevant?

Last but no least, may we all be better prepared for any catastrophes this year be it manmade or natural.  Japan and Thailand last year suffered in many dimensions but came back strong !

SDMALAYSIA New YEar Resolution

Dear SDMalaysia Readers,

It is never too late for us to wish all of you a Happy and Sustainable 2012 ahead. 




We at SDMalaysia will make 3 specific resolutions as part of our continuous effort to contribute in this subject.

1)  More visitors coming to sdmalaysia.blogspot.com . Please spread the news to new readers because we believe we can hit 5000 hits by the end of this year !

2) More posting in this blog. We have dedicated contributors for sdmalaysia but we would like to welcome contributions from YOU too.If you think you have something to share, please let us know and we will definitely showcase your work in this blog :)  

3) Last but not least: SDMalaysia will make a bigger impact in this country to champion the cause of sustainable development. 

Some say making resolution is akin to wishful thinking. We disagree with that notion as we have seen progress in Malaysia and Malaysians over the last years to ensure that we will reach our 2020 developed state in a sustainable manner. There are many challenges ahead but clear and realistic resolution will remind us that we can achieve our dream if we wake up and work hard to achieve them. 


Selamat Tahun Baru and God Bless us Malaysians !