Go Malaysia!! Keep going Green!!

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20 (Bernama) — Malaysia will host its first ever bio-fashion show at the MyBiotechnology Carnival 2010 from Saturday to Oct 2 at the National Science Centre. The carnival, organised jointly by the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC), Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation and the centre, is the first event on biotechnology in the country to support government’s efforts to develop the sector. Since the launch of the National Biotech Policy in 2005, total investment in the industry has reached RM4.5 billion, with 173 BioNexus-Status companies contributing RM1.786 billion in total approved investment, said MABIC executive director Mahaletchumy Arujanan. Endorsed by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the carnival is expected to receive some 5,000 visitors, she said. “To ensure we reach out to others outside the Klang Valley, the carnival will be replicated in the northern regions at the Science Centre in Gunung Keriang, Kedah. “It will be held from Nov 6 to Nov 19, covering Kedah, Perak, Penang and Pahang,” she said in a statement today. — BERNAMA

The carnival programme begins on the 25th September - 2 October 2010

The Bio Runway is scheduled during the opening (27 Sept 9.30am - 11.30am) & closing (1 Oct 10 - 12.00am) ceremony.

This is indeed something we can all be proud of & Mikka Green will endeavour to be there! Hope to see you guys there too! 

Found this interesting game on the Marks & Spencer Plan A page.

Practice your waste-free cookery with this great game.

Did you know we throw away a third of all the food we buy? Imagine buying six bags of shopping in the supermarket then chucking two of them in the bin!

Over a year this adds up to 6.7 million tonnes of food waste - enough to fill Wembley Stadium 8 times over.

Why not play this new game to see how you and your family can reduce the amount of food you waste?

I tried it!….it’s surprisingly challenging….now its your turn to give it a go ;)

All you greenies out there…share with us more of what’s Green & Fabulous in your part of the world!

xoxo

MG Team 

For those of you who are still skeptical about trying organic food or wondering why it is expensive, this is a must read. Our fave Gorgeously Green Guru has some great thoughts and green experiences to share with us.

Inspiring Malaysians on a mission to save our planet! Kudos!

Eco-Oasis is more than just an organic shop that promotes a healthy, chemical-free lifestyle and introducing organic, environmental friendly products. Our concept goes beyond that. It is a place where you can also meet like-minded people and enjoy delicious, healthy meals at our bistro, share ideas, learn together – all in a smoke free environment. A place where you can be creative, meet clients over organic coffee and homemade organic cakes, bring your laptop and enjoy free wifi or simply relax and rejuvenate in our spa. You even can get support from a certified coach. 

 

This 31st August, get out your red, white, blue, yellow… and green! While you’re celebrating your country and your freedom, support its sustainability and independence by being eco-conscious and reducing your dependence on environmentally-impactful activities.

Whether it’s the carbon effects of grilling a merdeka bbq, the resource-draining facts about meat or a myriad of other concerns like disposable plastic ware, carbon emissions from the horrendous traffic jam, the fact is that your festivities aren’t easy on the earth. But we’re not here to rain on your patriotic party, rather, to tell you it’s possible to celebrate green. After all, shouldn’t finding sustainable, earth-friendly ways to live our lives be what Malaysia is all about as we turn 53?

Top 5 Green Tips this Merdeka:

1. Carpool if you’re going for a Merdeka event so that we won’t all be stuck in traffic on a public holiday

2. If you’ll be frequenting the Ramadhan bazaars don’t forget to bring your own bags and SAY NO to PLASTIC! (also styrofoam packaging if possible)

3. Creating war zone-esque air quality is a pretty big price to pay for the prettiness of a dazzling fireworks show. How can you help keep the atmosphere clean? Avoid doing fireworks at home. If you want to take part, watch a nearby show. Think the DBKL people will be interested in earth-friendly fireworks methods (like the compressed air technique now used at Disney)? Worth a shot guys.

4. When you get to the grocery store to shop for your Merdeka  celebration, skip the packages of our fave Ramly burger hot dogs and head for greener pastures: local / organic food. Not only will they mean no harsh chemicals going into the earth and less resources being used in transportation, they’ll taste much, much better. If you’re going to be firing up the grill (with organic charcoals or natural gas, right?) to barbecue chicken and steak, seek out free range meats and poultries, which are more humane and often better tasting.

5. Make it a point to do 1 good deed this Merdeka day & get your family in on sustainability. Leave the plastic bottles on the shelves or turn the tap off whille you’re brushing your teeth (tweet about it if u like and use a #mikkagreen hashtag so we know you’ve been good!)

Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!

Let’s free our mind, body  & spirit….to embrace a GREENER Malaysia!

Love,

The Mikka Green Team

In order to change our unending addiction to Stuff, we need to redefine progress. We need to realize Stuff doesn’t make us happy.

The Story of Stuff is subtitled “How our obsession with stuff is trashing the planet, our communities, and our health – and a vision for change.” Its author, Annie Leonard, is not anti-stuff but she explains that, “I want us to value our stuff more to care for it, to give it the respect it deserves. I want us to recognize that each thing we buy involved all sorts of resources and labor.” Leonard describes Stuff as “manufactured or mass-produced goods, including packaging.” Hence, this book is all about “Stuff we buy, maintain, lose, break, replace, stress about, and with which we confuse our personal self-worth.” 

Stuff is a global problem

Annie Leonard is an expert in sustainability and environmental health issues. She has campaigned and investigated factories and waste disposal systems for over twenty years, working with groups such as Greenpeace International and the Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance.

She writes from her own perspective as a US citizen, but makes it clear that stuff is a global problem, in its construction, consumption and its disposal. She gives numerous examples of how these things are interconnected across the world. When the richest 20% of the world’s population are responsible for over 75% of its consumption and the world’s poorest 20% responsible for less than 2% then there is plenty of scope for some global redistribution of Stuff.

This book is not a guide to living a greener life, although Leonard does provide some ideas for individual actions. Rather, it is a critique of the dogma of economic growth, capitalism and above all, consumerism and over-consumption.  It contains five main chapters that cover the life cycle of every product we use in our our homes and our lives namely: Extraction, Production, Distribution, Consumption and Disposal.

The life cycle of Stuff

Extraction often involves the destruction of whole landscapes to obtain minute quantities of ore from tonnes of rock. The horror stories in Production include the former Union Carbide factory in Bhopal. Leonard argues fiercely that if any industrial process is too toxic for communities in the developed world then it should also be banned in the developing world.

In Distribution there is discussion of the local food movement, a hopeful trend to reduce food miles and invest in local communities.

In Consumption she considers some of the reasons we seek to acquire stuff beyond our real needs.  Unfortunately, she concludes, “Stuff doesn’t make us happy,” and focuses on advertising and planned obsolescence as devices that have promoted unnecessary consumption.

In Disposal Leonard concentrates on the need for systemic changes, often requiring input at the production stage.  Such changes might include the introduction of returnable containers, reducing packaging waste, composting, designing modular and upgradable electronics products. Leonard argues that incineration is easily as bad as landfill.

Exporting toxic stuff

Exporting our toxic waste to other countries in the guise of  recycling is not the answer either. Leonard recounts the story of the Khian Sea, a ship which set out  carrying incinerator ash from Philadelphia and  dumped some in Haiti under the guise of importing ‘fertilizer.’ It went on to spend twenty-seven months at sea in a desperate search for somewhere to unload its toxic cargo, finally dumping it illegally in mid ocean.

Leonard is realistic in this book about how complex it is to make changes and how the choices are not always straightforward. She champions political and community engagement, believing that it is not enough for people to simply recycle, particularly if waste goods are simply ‘downcycled’ in the production chain, so that new raw materials are  still needed to replace the original products. She argues that there must be full-scale system changes.

Low impact choice

Society needs to change so that the default action is a low impact choice.  In the book’s epilogue she suggests four major paradigm shifts that need to take place, shifts which would “lay the groundwork for creating an ecologically compatible life on earth – life with greater happiness, greater equity and for many of us, less polluting, wasteful, cluttering stuff.”

According to Annie Leonard, we need to redefine progress (away from GDP as the main measure of how well a country is doing), do away with war (which costs governments so much and prevents them doing more worthwhile things) and internalize externalities (by making producers pay the full cost of the damage they do to the environment and societies).  Finally, we need to “value time over Stuff”.

The Story of Stuff provides ample information for those campaigning for such changes.  Although there are moments when her arguments sound borderline obsessive, for example when writing about the evils of some products such as PVC, she also offers resources to back up her revulsion (www.besafenet.com/pvc/).

More resources

And ultimately, it is her passionate belief in the need for change which drives this book. Leonard writes,  “take an inventory of your interests, passions, and skills and then look out in the world and see which organizations are a good match.” There are a vast number of useful online resources to be gleaned from this book, many of them international in their remit. To give you some ideas, they include the following:

• Wiser Earth  http://www.wiserearth.org/
• Freecycle  http://www.freecycle.org
• Happy Planet Index http://www.happyplanetindex.org
• Earth Rights International  http://www.earthrights.org/
• Human Rights Watch  http://www.hrw.org/
• Good Guide  http:www.goodguide.com
• Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives  http://www.no-burn.org/
• Toxics Use Reduction Institute  http://www.turi.org/
• Clean Production Action  http://www.cleanproduction.org
• Green Science Policy Institute  http://www.greensciencepolicy.org
• Rainforest Action Network  http://ran.org/
• End Mountaintop Removal  http://www.ilovemountains.org/

 

“There’s so much work to be done in over-hauling our current systems that it doesn’t really matter which issue you choose; what matters is that the work is done towards the broader goal of a sustainable and just world for everyone.”

If you enjoy The Story of Stuff then you might also want to read Fred Pearce’s Confessions of an Eco Sinner which covers some very similar territory but has more in depth personal case histories tracking down where his stuff comes from and where it goes to.

If you’re into the practicalities and politics of human waste and sanitation then Rose George’s Book The Big Necessity is a compelling read. Annie Leonard’s own The Story of Cosmetics has just been launched and is available at her website http://www.storyofstuff.com/ where you can also see the original film that led to the writing of The Story of Stuff.

Reviewer Pauline Masurel is a gardener and writer who lives in the United Kingdom, near Bristol.  She is a regular reviewer of fiction for The Short Review website and has reviewed books for Amateur Gardening magazine.  Her own short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on BBC radio and featured online.  She was a runner up in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story competition and is a member of the storytelling group Heads & Tales. More about her own writing can be found on her website www.unfurling.net.

2010 Fashion MUST HAVES!!! Or else….BY Sophie Ulliano

I picked up a Sunday Fashion Magazine here in England today and splattered across the cover, I read: “MUST-HAVE Fashion For the Fall!” I had a good look through all the “editor’s picks” to try to make sense of all the different styles that are being touted as the pieces you’ve got to have or else you might risk looking like a total loser. All this “must-have” business get’s really tiresome, especially for someone with a penchant for fashion, like myself, but whose also desperately trying to be Green. As I pounded the streets of ever-so Trendy London last week, I noticed that gone were the Grecian Sandals that only a month ago were the thing, and in place of them were great clodhopper, clog-style  shoes/boots with very high heels – actually these shoes look pretty silly on most of the women because they necessitate the wearer to kind of shuffle along, probably because of the heavy wooden soles, which I can assure you was not sustainable or reclaimed wood.

I had a good poke around Top Shop in Oxford Circus – a massive emporium of cheap sweatshop pieces that hit the store before the models have even got off the runway. It was jam packed with shredded jeans and jeggings, ripped sweaters, sloppy cardigans, biker jackets, thigh high socks, and rows upon rows of knock-off designer shoes. Top Shop is where everyone from super-models to secretaries head, and spend their hard-earned cash in the hope of looking up-t0-the-minute this season. Even super-model Kate Moss, has her own Top Shop collection. Observing the three massive floors of cheap merchandise, it bought up that old chestnut – that ugly question, “where does all this stuff end up when no one wants it anymore?”. Where have all those cheap leather and vinyl Grecian Sandals the fashionistas were wearing in the summer (in London the Summer fashion season is so over now darling!) – where oh where do they go?

Since clothing, cloth or fabric cannot be recycled, unless you do it yourself at home, most of these cheap fashion items either clog up overstuffed closets, make their way to a thrift store, or get chucked in the landfill. Either way, no one really wants this stuff anymore – it’s done, Over with a capital O, and will likely not come back into fashion for at least another decade, if ever. This year, it’s vintage again – this time mid-eighties vintage (ugh, can you believe the 80’s, even 90’s in now considered vintage). So if you happened to hang onto your sloppy stripey sweaters and palazzo pants from 25 years ago, you might be in luck, if not – you rise above it or join the masses of women who are unwittingly placing a hefty burden on our fragile planet.

Now, as most of you now know, Miss Gorgeously Green here is not averse to a nice designer shoe or a trendy little dress when it might happen to cross her path, BUT I’m getting really turned off this whole “must-have” business as never before. I’ll never be a full-on hemp and velcro sandals type of girl- you all know that by now, but I’m committed more than ever to 2 things:

Number one – If and when I can afford to buy something new, it must be classic – it absolutely has to be a piece that I can honestly wear for years. These pieces often cost a little more because if I want something to last, it obviously has to be well made. I bought a little black Audrey Hepburn-ish dress 10 years ago and almost had a heart attack in the process as it was so expensive. That said, I have worn it literally hundreds of times and because of its clean and simple design, it never goes out of fashion. I do slip up every now and again, especially in the footwear department, but these indulgences are getting very far and few between.

Number two: the second course of action is to learn to sew and by that I’m talking about sewing a full-on blouse, dress or pair of pants. I’ve always believed that where there’s a will, there’s a way! For those of you who have read Do It Gorgeously, I have included a few simple sewing projects, where you can re-use things like old sheets, sweaters and pillowcases, which is enormously fun and satisfying.

BTW, if you have the book,  you just have to have a go at making the yoga pants from and old man’s t-shirt – I made a pair the other day and they are fabulous! However, to make a dress or pair of pants is beyond my current skill level and so I’ve decided to take myself off to some local dressmaking lessons. Mercifully, these lessons are now very trendy (even Julia Roberts is having a go at making her own clothes) and so you may be able to find a class near you.

I plan to buy some lovely organic cotton that I saw at my local fabric store and see what I can knock up for this season. Since Top Shop is filled with wispy blouses, I think that’s the first thing I’ll attempt and now that I’ve blogged about it, I stand accountable – watch this space, as I promise to post the photos, for better or worse!

So if you or your kids have summer fashion items that you know won’t be worn again, don’t throw them in the recycle bin, it might assuage your guilt, but they can’t be recycled. Probably best to take them to the thrift store – or you could always rip/cut everything into shreds and use it to insulate your attic this winter.

Finally, I heard a great tip from the great British Actress Helen Mirren. When Helen travels, she packs extremely light as apparently upon reaching her destination, she finds the nearest thrift store and buys everything she needs.

 This makes a lot of sense, since Helen often travels from hot Los Angeles to freezing London, where she’ll need coats, boots, and scarves. When she’s ready to return, she bundles the whole lot up and drops it right back where it started – genius. If I spot Helen wearing a pair of Grecian Sandals in LA, they might well be the very ones I plan to drop off at my local Goodwill store when I get back!

Finally, if you’re in the money this year and want a bit of a splurge, have a look at these three excellent online stores, which carry a huge selection of beautiful eco-fashion pieces. BTC Elements, Green loop, KaightNYC

With the month of Ramadan here, food supplies are stocked up (ironic, I know), appointments are rescheduled and preparations are made for the month of spiritual rediscovery.

At its simplest Ramadan is a welcome reminder of the basic but invaluable blessing of food and water, but it is also a chance for Muslims to re-affirm their faith and reconnect with god and all his creations. And what better way to do this then by ‘greening’ your Ramadan.

Islam states that humans are the stewards of the earth, with a duty to protect it from harm but are we doing enough? Well, I have put together a basic list of things all Muslims can all do this Ramadan (and hopefully the rest of the year) to protect the environment and any ideas you want to add are welcome!

1. Eat better and also locally. After breaking fast (iftar), there is tendency for us Muslims to go crazy food-wise but do try to keep things to a minimum as you never eat as much as you think you will.

A MALAYSIAN IFTAR … Ironically, many Muslims tend to eat and waste more during this holy month

• Eat less red meat and chicken, more fresh and locally produced fruit and veg as apposed to processed or imported goods.
• A lot of organisations such as Islamic Relief are now encouraging Muslims to buy fair trade as well as free-range and organic goods.
• This Ramadan could also be the perfect opportunity to switch to organic halal meat.
• Finally, if you are organising a public iftar, please don’t use tons of plastic cutlery which gets chucked away….it’s as simple as asking people to bring their own plates.

2. Use your car less. Just ask yourself do you really need to take your car to taraweeh prayers after iftar (breaking your fast) when the mosque is a 5 minutes walk away and you are going in a crowd of 10? Carpool if absolutely necessary but remember that you are blessed for every step you walk to the mosque not every mile you travel in a car.

Also try to break entrenched car-driving bad habits. From experience, those with a car seem to think that a 20 minute walk is too far but walking is a great way to exercise and de-stress, so take your time and free yourself from road-rage-inducing traffic jams and parking nightmares.

3. Use less water. Although it is really important to keep hydrated during Ramadan, don’t waste your money on bottled water and use tap water instead. Tap water doesn’t waste energy being produced and also doesn’t require plastic bottles which end up in landfills. Also be frugal when making wudu’ (ablution), the Prophet (peace and blessing upon him) made wudu’ with only half a litre of water and teaches us to conserve water even at a running spring.

4. Waste less. This is basically encouraging people to buy less, use less and then recycle what’s left behind. As it says in the Qur’an:

“Eat and drink but waste not by excess, for Allah loves not the wasters.” – 7:31.

This applies to everything: food, water, clothes, books and even your rubbish. Just be creative! I know that we are supposed to look our best at Eid but this doesn’t mean buying lots of new clothes that we will never use again.

There are loads of organisations running swap shops locally and you could even organise your own- invite friends and family along with items to swap to brighten up your outfit on Eid day.

Finally, bring on the hand-made, recycled Eid cards!

5. Spread the message! Ask your Imam to do a khutbah on the issue of caring for the environment. It doesn’t have to be about the complex nature of carbon counting just the basic stewardship concept and encouraging Muslims to become more aware of their environment and the impact their behaviors have on the world. Put up posters on the issues and just talk to people about it and what practical things they can do.

Here is a blog which has some links to (pdf) poster print-outs.

6. Proof it can be done: In Chicago, a ‘Green Ramadan’ initiative was launched by the Council of Islamic Organization of Greater Chicago in 2009 which encouraged Muslims to eat locally, drink tap water, recycle and to educate themselves about climate change and what they can do so save the planet. On the website, they remind us that:“Ramadan is a once a year opportunity to tackle global issues like overconsumption, materialism, poverty, hunger, wars and yes, global warming.”

By Arwa Aburawa

http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/08/green-ramadan-go-green/