We’ve been talking about irresponsible disposal of waste and how it ends up in all sorts of places in the environment, including somewhere in the middle of the ocean in a veritable island of garbage. While we can talk about ways of reducing our load on the environment by being more careful about what we consume and where we dispose the waste, ultimately there’s very little else we can do about the garbage that’s already out there besides waiting for it to biodegrade (which can take hundreds of years or may never even biodegrade) or by volunteering to clean it up one person at a time.

Clean Up The World is a global campaign with the singular aim of cleaning up the earth even if it means having to pick up every single piece of garbage individually. While it might sound over-optimistic to some, they’ve already claimed some success with millions of volunteers around the world and even in Malaysia. In December 2008, the World Youth Foundation, a member of the Clean Up The World foundation organized a clean up session of the Melaka River that involved clearing out the rubbish and algae, planting new trees and recycling anything that can be recycled. We’re particularly encouraged by the fact that the World Youth Foundation in Malaysia is headed by the honourable Menteri Besar of Melaka. Support from the highest levels is always essential to helping these efforts become a success.  Read the rest of this entry »

You don’t need to be particularly interested in economics or politics to know that we are currently living in very turbulent times, both in Malaysia and around the world. The ongoing conflict in the Gaza region, continued instability in Africa and some other regions of the world have been highlighted in the media quite frequently. We’re not entirely free from some political turbulence here in Malaysia as well, as I’m sure many of our readers are aware. To top it all off, there is a raging financial crisis that is consuming the attention of practically all the world leaders. Simply put, these are challenging times.

I attended a talk fairly recently by a Nobel Prize laureate in economics. Although the talk was on global financial volatility (think of this as a technical way of saying that the financial markets are extremely uncertain right now), it was particularly sobering to note that, in the past, periods of high financial volatility have very frequently been followed by periods of marked social unrest and even military conflict. It is even scarier to note that the past two world wars both followed periods of financial instability. I don’t want to be a scaremonger here, but it is important to remember that, Read the rest of this entry »

In February, Australia has experienced some of the most deadly bushfires in its history with hundreds of lives lost, thousands of families displaced, and entire towns lost to the blazing inferno. It’s a great tragedy and although our hearts go out to the people who have been affected, we hope that by educating Malaysians about bushfires and how these happens, we can create greater awareness about what to do and some of the important precautions that need to be taken to prevent similar problems from happening.

It is still too early to definitely state what caused the bushfires still raging in Australia but one thing is certain – Australia’s particularly hot and dry summer has contributed greatly to spreading the bushfires as extensively as they did. In such hot and dry conditions, even a small spark can ignite a raging inferno. Unfortunately, we can’t totally rule out human causes either and it appears that arson may have caused (for example, see this article) the bushfire to be as big as they are. Read the rest of this entry »

NO pre-requisite to enter this contest. We want you to submit your original, relevant, informative yet entertaining comment as much as you can! If your post is being selected, you will walk away with a complimentary 2D/1N stay in MyHome, Melaka*. Read the rest of this entry »

We know that we need a lot of oil to power society and the economy as it stands right now, but sometimes it seems we’re not quite aware of just how much oil we’re using and the nature of the oil industry. In this blog entry, we talk about some of the controversial practices in the oil industry that are frequently the sticking point for a lot of environmentalists. Incidentally, we became aware of some of these practices by watching a video by George Monbiot, a noted environmental journalist, which you can view here.

We naturally went out and tried to find out more information about two of the controversial practices as stated in the video: prospecting in tar sands and gas flaring. Unfortunately, demand for oil around the world, particularly in the huge developing countries of India and China means that oil companies have been increasingly forced to turn to less conventional sources of crude oil just to produce enough petrol for use by other industries. Read the rest of this entry »

More than 250 people thronged our Open House last Saturday (7 February 2009) at our headquarter office to join all the well-wishers to celebrate the Chinese New Year. The muhibbah spirit once again filled the air on this beautiful Saturday morning as people from all walks of life were thrilled to be invited to this joyous occasion. Read the rest of this entry »

Most people would think of golf as a healthy pursuit – after all, what could be healthier than spending some time out in the fresh air, hitting a few strokes and walking around some lush greenery? Unfortunately, the reality used to be different from what you see – it is not always that simple to maintain such pristine greenery and some pretty shocking chemical “tricks” had to be pulled off in order to keep a good golf course. To keep the grasses green on the golf course, particularly around the green, it used to be that a huge amount of herbicides, pesticides and other nasty chemicals had to be used to keep them in perfect condition.

Thankfully, the golfing industry has, in 1995, responded to challenges about the environmental sustainability of golf courses and has taken many initiatives to ensure that improvements are made to ensure that golf remains an environmentally friendly and healthy sport. By commissioning studies into the fate of fertilizers and pesticides after being used on the golf course, a comprehensive framework has been designed to ensure that all golf courses can follow the guidelines and minimize the impact on the environment. This is really key to the success of the scheme because, Read the rest of this entry »

I recently got an e-mail about “fruit enzymes” and how this can be a natural way to improve your health and care for the environment as well. For those of you who have heard about this, the story goes something like this: add some brown sugar to a mixture of fruits or fruit rinds and leave for a few months before using it to clean around the house, or drinking some of it to kill bad stomach bacteria and aid your digestion. For more details about these claims, there is an article in The Star here.

While I’m all for natural remedies to reduce reliance on unhealthy chemical products, we would like to highlight some of the “science” in this article because there are some very fanciful claims that we would have liked the author to verify before penning such a piece. Read the rest of this entry »