8 Painless Ways to Cut Your Electricity Bill This Winter

Fellow ecowarrior Nicole Adams sent me this information which some of you, in colder countries, might find useful.

With the winter season upon us, the high heating expenses are not far behind. There was a time when the only to combat them was to stay away from the heater and suffer. However, in recent times there have been loads of advances in conservation, efficiency, and technology. Below are 8 painless ways to cut your electric bill that require a little time, less money, and can end up saving you hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of dollars across a short span of time.

Click here for more.

Waste Seminar part 2

On the whole, I found the Waste Management Association of Malaysia's (WMAM) seminar quite boring and uninspiring which is why part 2 has taken so long to finally make it into the blogosphere.

Having said that, the second day was a bit more interesting than the previous one and opened with an overview of the government's Green Technology Policy, which was launched by the PM on 24 July 2009. As I'm not professionally involved in waste management I found this very informative. However I was surprised that the other participants, who were involved in the industry, didn't already know about the RM1.5 billion in soft loans that are available to fund green technology initiatives. The Ministry of Energy Green Technology and Water has identified four key sectors for the fund, namely: energy, water and waste management, building and transportation and I formed the opinion during the talk, that applications for water and energy projects would be particularly welcome.

The fund operates through local participating commercial banks with a Ministry of Finance / Bank Negara subsidy to keep interest at 2% per annum. The ministry is apparently hoping to receive applications from 150 companies by the start of 2010. I'll be keeping an eye on what projects eventually get funded so watch this space...

Next up was a presentation from Taylor, a UK based company who are reputably the world's leading manufacturer of waste and recycling containers. It's hard to imagine anyone getting too excited about bins but a large number of the participants from the local authorities and Alam Flora suddenly became very animated and asked a lot of questions after the presentation. This was more like a marketing exercise for his company's galvanised metal waste containers than anything else. I began to wonder what relevance this talk had to the seminar's overall theme of innovations in green technology to improve waste management. The only really innovative thing he announced was the launch of his company's new carbon neutral container. No disrespect to the speaker, he did a good job and was networking like crazy, but I would have thought that the local authorities and concessionaires would already have this information.

Surely they keep updated on products related to their industry as a matter of course, don't they?

The next topic focused on using organic waste as bio-stimulators to clean up hydrocarbon and other contaminants from the soil. The speaker from University Malaya (UM) had a tough job because the Seri Pacific Hotel, which was the venue for the seminar, decided to test their fire alarms just as he started. Poor guy!  He valiantly tried to continue over the clanking fire bell and a public address announcement telling us not to be alarmed! His talk was quite scientific but the crux of his research is the use of organic waste like banana skins, spent mushroom compost and spent brewer's grain to reduce oil pollution and other soil toxins. 

The final speaker of the morning was from Worldwide Holdings Berhad, who talked about landfill gas management. At present Worldwide are responsible for 2 inert landfills for items such as rubber tyres and plastic, which do not produce gas, and 5 additional landfills that do.  I learned a few things from this presentation such as you need a minimum of 600 cubic metres of waste to harvest enough LFG to produce 1MW of electricity.  This means at the present renewable energy tariff of 21sen per kilowatt hour you need to produce 2MWs to make LFG sustainable for generating electricity. According to the speaker, small landfills of say 10-20 acres are not viable for LFG utilisation, you need at least 60 hectares. Getting electricity from garbage sounds like a great idea to me. I visited Recycle Energy Sdn, Bhd. in Semenyih in September who are also producing electricity from garbage. They are currently getting 8MWs of electricity from the municipal waste they get from the Kajang municipality. If more companies concentrated on extracting energy from the garbage they should definitely qualify for a Greentech soft loan.  The beauty of using garbage in the form of LFG or RDF (refuse derived fuel) to generate power is that you know it's going to be renewable - national garbage production increases every year as we consume more and more in the pursuit of our lifestyles, so there's little danger of a shortage of raw material. So instead of talking about hydro electric or nuclear power plants, which will have a destructive impact on the natural environment and people's lives, we should be looking at how much power we can get from the garbage and thereby kill two proverbial birds with one stone.

In the afternoon session there was a presentation from a consultant from YTL-SV Carbon Sdn Bhd on how carbon credits can be used to finance green technology in waste management.  Carbon credits, more precisely known as Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), have been in operation since 1997 when they were introduced under the Kyoto Protocol.  Malaysia is a signatory and several Malaysian companies, some of whom were at the seminar, are already benefitting: the Bukit Tagar landfill in Selangor operated by KUB Berjaya Enviro Sdn Bhd and the Seelong landfill in Johor operated by SWM Environment Sdn Bhd are just two examples.  Although the speaker, was very knowledgeable and meticulous I felt this topic seemed a little off target for this audience and also wondered why it was included given that the carbon credit system as we know it is about to become defunct.

The main target of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, which started on December 7th and goes on to December 18th, is to get global agreement on the further reduction of greenhouse gas emissions once the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2010. 

The final two sessions of the seminar were devoted to the practical application of green technology at the Seelong landfill, which handles the garbage from Johor Baru, and producing fertiliser from kitchen waste using Effective Microbe (EM) technology.  Both speakers from SWM Environment and UTM respectively were very engaging, but quite frankly, if this seminar aimed to showcase the cutting edge of green technology in Malaysia I fear for our future.  

All in all I went through a kaleidascope of emotions during those 2 days: boredom, embarrassment, anger  and ultimately frustration. Ultimately I felt it was more like a cartel get-together than a seminar.  Most of the participants seemed to have the attitude that they were on a jolly 2 day rest from the office in a comfortable and cool venue with good food thrown in. I was shocked by how many people had left their mobiles on - some even made loud calls during the presentations and I was even more concerned that nobody else, apart from me, seemed bothered by this rude behaviour. So thanks again WMAM for allowing me to attend but please, next time can you make your seminar's a bit more eclectic and dynamic and insist that your participants put their phones on silent mode and at least pretend they are listening, and choose a warmer venue...but hey, the food was great!

Waste Seminar part 1

I attended a 2-day seminar last week entitled “Green Technologies on Waste Management: Current Knowledge and Practices”. It was organized by The Waste Management Association of Malaysia (WMAM) and held at the Seri Pacific Hotel next to PWTC. 

WMAM very kindly allowed me in for free accepting that bloggers are part of the media too these days.  So a big thank you to them for that. 

 Unfortunately I missed the opening address, and the keynote speech, arriving just in time for the first speaker of the day from UKM who talked about using artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced automation to separate recycled containers from the garbage instead of the so-called scavengers who currently do this odious and unhealthy job. 

 As he talked about his prototype it was obvious that it will be a long time before this type of innovation will be able to have a significant impact on solving the issue at hand namely: the use of green technology in waste management to eliminate the production of greenhouse gases and to produce renewable energy. This will make a significant contribution to Malaysia’s effort to reduce global warming, as well as improving the environment.

Courtesy of Prof. Hassan Basri

The next speaker from UITM spoke about applying green technology to treat pollutants such as pharmaceutical and personal care products, endocrine modulating chemicals, nano materials and biological metabolites that are now finding their way into our water as a result of continuous and excessive use of improper disposal.  His forte is developing bio-solvents to absorb heavy metals so they can be recovered from contaminated water. During the research they found considerable amounts of PAH in municipal sewage sludge.  Similar research has been going on in Germany and Japan and there’s no doubt that this work is all valuable in the long term but it was all so theoretical yet again. 

 By lunchtime I was feeling slightly depressed by the lack of dynamism in the topics so far, another case of the “same old, same old.” I’m sure some great things will emerge from this research in the future but again, and I can’t over-stress this, we need to take action now!  And while it was interesting to hear about these research projects, there wasn’t any mention of the people who are already using EM (effective microbes) and nano technology to clean-up effluent right now.  I would have thought that a seminar organized by practitioners for practitioners would have had a practical rather than a theoretical focus. But there was still the afternoon session to look forward to.

 The first speaker was from Alam Flora  and she managed to raise my temperature, even though the room was very cold.  Now as far as I know, one of the reasons that Alam Flora got the concession to collect garbage from Selangor, Kelantan Pahang, Terengganu and the Federal Territories of K.L. and Putra Jaya back in 1995 was because they were in line with the ministry’s 3R policy to reduce, reuse, recycle.  So what have they been doing since then? Not much if this speaker’s presentation was anything to go by. The first part concentrated on different types of green technology and their various applications but when it came to the contribution Alam Flora was making it would appear nothing much has changed since they took over the concession almost 15 years ago.   

Courtesy of Sarifah Yaccob

They have set up pilot recycling schemes in Putrajaya and on the UKM campus but apart from that a lot of the recycling that is taking place is being done by privately funded initiatives, not Alam Flora. She did, almost dismissively, mention that Recycle Energy are generating electricity from RDF (refuse derived fuel in Semenyih but it wasn’t clear that this was a private initiative.  And anyway why is she talking about treatment when her company is responsible for collection?  Why not tell us what innovations are taking place in that department. But it was when she talked about the school educational programmes that I began to warm up.

Courtesy of Sarifah Yaccob

Now here’s the thing. Why does Alam Flora need to do this when schools are already staffed by qualified teachers?  Surely it wouldn’t be too difficult for this type of environmental awareness to be built into the curriculum, would it?  This would free Alam Flora to do what we need them to do, namely: to provide us with the bags or containers to store our separated waste in, and to have a fleet of trucks that keep it separated on it’s way to the recycle centre.

 The thing that really inflamed me was this ideas that it’s the public’s fault that more recycling isn’t going on. At present only 5% of our waste is being recycled but whose fault is that?  This idea that we’re all too stupid to figure out how to recycle is incredibly insulting. I agree that there is a need for a public campaign to create more awareness about how we manage our waste but this isn’t Alam Flora’s role, is it? 

I thought they were garbage collectors.  And whilst the residents and other garbage producing inhabitants of Putrajaya are enjoying the illusion that all’s well on the garbage front, many of the rest of us don’t get our rubbish collected at all.  I have to drive mine 10 kms to the nearest town and deposit it in an open communal skip by the roadside. In fact, since I came to live in Malaysia in 1988 I’ve only ever lived in 2 places that did have garbage collection and I don’t think my experience is uncommon. 

 This theme, that it’s the public’s fault, was repeated several times throughout the seminar by many of the speakers and participants, I felt like screaming. How on earth can we ever hope to start trying to solve our environmental problems when the so-called experts can’t seem to get beyond covering their own rear ends for a job badly done.  What’s blatantly missing is commitment, not only from the public but from the waste concessionaires, and the government too. They know how much money has been ploughed into waste management and they can also see -when they step outside the rarified and sanitized zone of Putrajaya - that we haven’t made much progress in the last 20 years or so.  The very fact that they are still talking about landfills when waste to energy technology is already up and running is, in itself, a measure of their lack of sincerity.  So I’m left asking what’s going on? Why don’t people take pride in their work and decide to do a good job instead of a mediocre one?

 The Alam Flora presentation was followed by a paper on converting waste to bio-fuels by a speaker from UTM who has been doing research into extracting bio-gas from waste. He said biotechnology was a useful strategy to adopt when treating sewage and palm oil waste but not efficient for solid waste.

Oxidation pond at Frangipani Hotel, Langkawi

Organic corn growing in the hotel's vegetable garden.

I was cheered up a little by the presenter from a hotel in Langkawi that is taking care of its own dirty business by composting their organic waste and treating their own wastewater. I had seen this presentation at the national waste seminar I attended in September so decided to do my bit to reduce my carbon footprint by leaving before  the notorious KL jam. 

 

ROAD TO NOWHERE- update

UPDATE: 5.11.09

KG PERTAK  2315

At around 9.30 tonight a police van arrived in Kg. Pertak and the officers asked my neighbour, Antares, to accompany them to the police station. Apparently an Orang Asli man named Rapi has made another police report that Antares has been obstructing his work.  He has obviously got a heavily invested interest in the road to nowhere going somewhere. This is the second time he's made such a report.

Antares agreed to follow them down to town in his own vehicle after they intimated that they would arrest him if he didn't agree.

Within minutes of Antares leaving three other police officers arrived outside my house. They wanted a chat about the minister's visit to the village tomorrow. Senator Murugiah is scheduled to pay a call on Antares tomorrow morning - he's apparently on a fact--finding tour after complaints about the illegality of the road to nowhere reached his desk. 

The police officers took down my particulars and asked me what I knew about the ministers visit. I told them what I knew, which isn't much, and suggested to them that this was a complete waste of police time as it is very clearly a political issue.  They didn't disagree!

Really what a load of nonsense...what is this country coming to when police come to your house at 10pm, especially over such a trite accusation - maybe they're scared of the sunlight!  They were definitely scared of the dogs that Antares and I keep, kinda spoils their macho image that's for sure. It's hard to be intimidated by anyone who cowers at the sight of a K9.

I'm now waiting for Antares' return when I'm sure he'll let everyone know what's going on.

Peace

W2W

A revolutionary approach to integrated waste management

When I first encountered the Waste to Wealth concept in 2006 I was really excited because it seemed to me that this paradigm shift in the way we viewed garbage would have a much needed positive impact on the environment. However, apart from the slogan becoming a buzz phrase at seminars and conferences on solid waste management, there's been very little real progress in adopting this ideology. Today 95 percent of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) still ends up being dumped on one of the 289 landfills that scar the landscape, pollute the waterways and befoul the air. I call these heaving messes Jabbas after the fictitious character Jabba the Hutt from Star Wars. This is because, apart from looking a bit like a smelly garbage dump, the name Jabba has become synonymous with greed and corruption, and these are both qualities that I believe aptly describe waste management in this country.  What other explanation could there be for not adopting the Waste to Wealth model?

Jabba the Hutt - the greasy, odious, insect-ridden character from Star Wars 

 synonymous with greed and corruption

Unfortunately this is not fictitious.

As far as I know the only local council that is treating garbage as a resource is Kajang.  For the last 3 years, they have been sending 700 tons of household refuse a day to Recycle Energy Sdn. Bhd.in Semenyih, where 80 percent is reclaimed as recycled items or as fuel. 

How it works

Instead of going to the landfill, the garbage trucks deliver their loads to the resource recovery plant where the garbage is cleaned, dried and sorted using biological, mechanical and manual processes. As well as reclaiming the usual, organics, plastics, paper, glass and metal objects, that have an immediate resale value, they also harvest high calorific value waste and convert it to refuse derived fuel (RDF) This fuel is used to generate all the electricity they need to run the plant and the daily surplus is sent to the national grid. 

I've visited the Semenyih plant a few times over the last 3 years to see if they were really doing what they said they were going to.  The last time I was there was at the beginning of September, the same day that the Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister, Datuk Peter Chin paid a visit. He was visibly impressed with what he saw and so was I.

Datuk Peter Chin, minister for Energy, Green Technology and Water on a recent visit to Recycle Energy Sdn. Bhd.

First of all, there's none of the stench that usually accompanies raw garbage - not even the slightest whiff and there weren't any flies either. The main reason Malaysian garbage is particularly smelly is because It's very wet.  According to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 47 percent of household waste is organic matter. Things like intestines, fish scales, prawn shells, and the like, as well as vegetable peelings and left over food. No wonder our garbage smells so bad!  Once it arrives at the plant all this wet organic stuff is immediately separated from the rest of the garbage and sent for composting.  The leachate extracted from this wet garbage is treated to class A water on site.

Then all the materials that can be immediately recycled such as metals, paper, plastics and glass, are pulled out until all that's left is the high calorific waste like plastic bags, cellophane wrappers and hygienic wipes, which constitute the RDF, and toxic stuff like batteries and empty pesticide containers which are sent to a sanitary landfill. Incidentally you might be interested to know that out of the total number of landfills in the whole country only three are sanitary. 

 

AVERAGE COMPOSITION OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTE

ORGANIC WASTE    - 47%

PAPER / CARDBOARD - 15%

PLASTI CS - 14%

METAL - 4%

GLASS / CERAMIC - 3%

TEXTILES - 3%

OTHERS - 14%

SOURCE: Malaysian Ministry of Housing and Local Government (KPKT)

Where does the wealth come from?

A resource recovery plant is much more cost effective to run than a landfill because in addition to the tipping fee they receive from the municipal council, the technology used provides a continuous income stream from the sale of RDF-generated electricity (currently 21 sen per kilowatt) as well as creating revenue from the recovered items that can be recycled (see table below). This additional revenue ensures the sustainability of this model of waste management and allows the operator to keep the tipping fee at an affordable level. Being self-sufficient in power and water also keeps operational costs down.  Furthermore because this is a privately-funded model of waste management between MMC Berhad and Core Competencies Sdn. Bhd.it offers a potential RM2 billion saving to the government in terms of capital expenditure. 

VALUE OF WASTE ITEMS

PE :      RM 1.10 - 1.85/kg

PP :      RM 1.25/kg

PS :      RM 0.90/kg

HDPE resin :         RM 1.70/kg

Iron Scrap :      RM 0.70/kg

Aluminium can :     RM 3.10/kg

Based on present market prices

For more information on plastic recycling click here

I'm convinced that this model of waste management is financially viable 

and that if this approach was adopted nationwide it would immediately reduce the need for landfills by 80 percent and save money for all the stakeholders, namely: the government, the local councils and the householders.  So why don't we adopt this ideology?   

Over to you Jabba...

ROAD TO NOWHERE - update

I just got back from checking out how the illegal road in Kg. Pertak is progressing. Even though the contractors were told to stop work by Selangor State's Exco. member for Environment and Tourism,  Elizabeth Wong,  the road is definitely going ahead, but where it''s going is still a bit of a mystery.  Today there's a project signboard at the start of the new road, which seems to have sprung up overnight, bearing the government and ICU logos and names the contractor as Mohd. Shakir Bin Din.

The workers have already got as far as, what I call, the crocodile pool, which is about 2kms from the village.  This is a magnificent spot where another smaller river, known as Air La,  flows across the trail and joins the Sg. Luit.  Back in the 19th century the British, who were mining in the area, built a small railway that crossed the Sg. Luit at this spot, in fact remnants of the concrete pillars that held the rail track, are still visible on top of the huge boulders.   A metal suspension bridge, which is suitable for pedestrians and motorbikes only, currently spans the confluence.  It was  there that I had a chat to one of the bulldozer drivers. He claimed  the road up to the suspension bridge was phase 1 of the project.  Phase 2 is about to start on the other side of the suspension bridge and will go as far as the  main river crossing about 1.5 kms upstream.  The existing cable bridge is being left untouched, according to him.

Crocodile pool shot from the old jungle trail.

Remnants of the 19th century mining railway that crossed the Sg. Luit

Metal bridge spanning Air La

The other side of the metal bridge - phase 2, about to be bulldozed.

They have started laying a very fine aggregate on top of the stone chips but there are many places where the underlying water is still seeping through.  The drains they have installed are fed from open freshly dug ditches and there's already evidence of silting problems to come.  In one place a plastic pipe has been laid a couple of inches under the stone graveling to drain a small rivulet that flows across the road. It's hard to imagine this will last very long, especially with all the heavy construction vehicles constantly driving back and forth over it.  I'm not even convinced it's even a proper drainage pipe as the stones on top of it were damp indicating that the water was flowing freely underneath.

Fine aggregate piled up at Lubok Pusing.

Rumours are flying around that Wong Koon Mun has got his eye on a piece of land inside the jungle to build a tourist resort. You can read all about that at magickriver.blogspot.com/

Right now my biggest concern is that the road won't last very long and, if it does collapse, that the environment will be messed up even more and the Orang Asli will be cut off from their dusuns inside the jungle. Not far outside of the village there are signs that the road is already unstable on the side that slopes down to the rive  and there are now several, quite big trees, whose roots have been undermined, perching very precariously above the new road.  The fact that the road is being built so shoddily would tend to indicate that the rumour of resorts is untrue. Surely if there are plans to develop an area inside the jungle it would be completely insane not to make sure it was built to the highest standards.

I think it would be great to get an independent opinion on the quality of the road from a practicing civil engineer, so if anyone reading this has the necessary expertise and is willing to give an opinion free of charge then please get in touch with me here and I promise I'll publish your findings no matter what.

Lubok Pusing used to be a popular camping and picnic spot.

In the meantime I'm going to start badgering the Department of the Environment to find out if there was ever an EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) done for this project.  Of course I'm not expecting, given that the road is illegal, in which case the DOE should investigate and take some action.

Tomorrow Senator Datuk T. Murugiah from MIC is visiting Kg. Pertak in response to a complaint about the road by a local resident so stay tuned for more news...  

CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE KELAU DAM PROJECT

The Kelau dam project involves the transfer of raw water from the Kelau river in Pahang to Selangor, by tunneling through the main range.  Besides inundating forested land, the project also involves the unneccesary relocation of the Orang Asli (indigenous minority peoples of Peninsular Malaysia) in Kampung Temir and Bukit Cenal. Watch the revealing video on the Kelau dam project at http://www.coac.org.my