289,669

A Malaysia Record was born last Saturday. The largest collection of beverage packets in a month was achieved with the collection of 289,669 unit of packets. This is a joint attempt by MBPJ, TetraPak and Lions Clubs International District 308B1, Malaysia to raise awareness on 3R Initiative. The high impact programme was commenced on 1st February 2010 and end on 6th March 2010 with the fun-filled and entertaining Recycling Carnival at One-Utama Shopping Centre.

While achieving the Record is an achievement itself for Local Agenda 21 Petaling Jaya, the most important message to bring out from the campaign is participatory implementation of 3R. For the first time, Lions Clubs throughout Malaysia were collecting the packets and amazingly Lions Club of Kuala Trengganu comes out top amongst the participating organisation with a total collection of 26,000 packets. Many have admitted this was the first time that packets were collected as they are not aware about the recycling of packets.

The Campaign has, in fact open many's mind about 3R and recycling.

Gong Xi Fa Cai 2010

Xi

Come this Saturday, the MBPJ's Chinese New Year Celebration with LA 21 PJ will be on again. Starting from 8pm until 10.30pm, various activities include possession of floral car, vintage cars, dragon dance, school band, marching squad and lions dance as well as stage performance by popular artist, cultural shows, Chinese orchestra, face change and other interesting and fun-filled programmes. Light refreshment will also be served. For the lucky one, you might won prizes ranging from free parking in PJ, plasma TV, Coffee Table book of PJ to other attractive prizes. Everyone and up to 5000 people will be having the chance.

Meet you there on 13th March 2010 at PJ Civic Centre Car park lot.

Children Feeling

I learned a lesson last week. To many, it means so petty but to some few it is so damaging.

Under the Child Friendly City Initiative, we supposed to interview some child candidates last Saturday. The session has to cancel due to lack of response. Many children have other engagement and preferred to be interviewed next date available. However, two girls agreed to come. My staff managed to call those involved and informed them about the cancellation except both the girls. Their phone were not contactable and as the last resort, voice mail was recorded informing the news. Some how rather the message was not through and the girls turned themselves up for interview. They felt disappointed. so do me and others for the breaking down of communication. Some have asked us to issue an official apologies.

The argument is we should treat the children with care and promote atmosphere of welcoming them to participate and contribute towards making PJ a Child Friendly City. If we do not accord them right equity, they will feel on inferior of working under the adult instead of working along the adult. In other word, to respect them as equal partners.

It makes sense. Many of the time, we tend to treat children, the segment of community that need protection and guidance for which many future actions and directions have been for them without their participation. We tend to presume they like this and that or they should do this or not to do that. Very little efforts are spent to consult the children, or ignore their view even early consultation was made. I believe this is the basis instinct of fatherhood or motherhood of adult in protecting the children. Perhaps also the generational and expectation gaps.

In facing the challenges of the days, many social ills involving children and youth cannot be resolved without involving the stakeholders themselves. We should, therefore listen passion, understand deeply, act accordingly and embrace the children thoroughly or else risk of losing the children trust on us. The incident, if not handle with care will bring damage to the yet established Child Council.

Thereby, I have no objection for saying SORRY if necessary and the aggravated parties feel more comfortable.

1st Record Making for LA 21 PJ

Comes this Saturday 6th March 2010, a record in Malaysia will be created by stakeholders of PJ and Lions members. Campaign on The Largest Collection of Beverage Packet in a month will reach the peak on this day. Various fun-filled activities such as interactive games, performance, exhibition and charity sale of packet drink would be held from 10.30am to 10.00pm at the Entrance of New Wing, One-Utama Shopping Centre, Petaling Jaya.

Would you like to be part of the great team in achieving such a feet, for 3R and the Earth? Please join us

Green Cities

Terminologies such as sustainability dividend, productivity dividend, global reporting initiative, life cycle analysis, return of investment, cost benefit analysis, SPEAR, environmental accounting, carbon trading and etc were brought up countless during the 2-day Green Cities Conference held in Putrajaya last week. Many participants might have heard about them or some might have understood them, but I believe many have not applied them in their works or daily practice. None of the Local Authorities in Malaysia has even incorporated the terms in their master plans and programmes. The closer we have, I think is talking about climate change briefly in the report. Therefore, it must be an eye opener to many local participants hearing the foreign speakers sharing their experiences. Similarly, it must be refreshing listening to accountant from Australia talking about accounting in sustainable cities and property man spoke on strategic and total asset management. Sustainable development and climate change is responsibility of everyone, contradict to the believe of many city managers in Malaysia that the topic is confined to town planners and environmentalist.

While climate change is real and attempts are forthcoming from all stakeholders to overcome it, the real challenge to me must be creating common stand and agreeing on common target. Everyone agrees that human factor is chief amongst the many factors determining the success of minimising impact from global warming. People as the end user of resources as well as the polluter has personal responsibility to reduce his/her ecological footprint. And doing so, means changing the way of life and lavish lifestyle. While the people from developed countries except North American have realised it and moving towards less consumption lifestyle, the people from developing countries is considering of having lavish lifestyle a symbol of higher social status.

Everyone is talking about reducing carbon emission through innovative approaches and technologies on transportation, land use planning, structural change of governance system and management of cities. At the end of the day, it is leadership and initiation of people. The President of Putrajaya Corporation and community leader of Sukunan, Indonesia vindicated the importance of political and management will in greening the city. We need a mover, initiator and builder for sustainability.

The terms of sustainable city, livable city, green city, knowledge city, healthy city and etc are mentioned and quoted throughout the Conference. Many have spoken passionately about various initiatives. While some agencies or individual are ego and tend to protective on championing their own initiative under different terms, it must be acknowledged that all these programmes are trying to achieve same goal, that is to preserve a quality living environment for all within the carrying capacity of our Mother Nature. To me, it is OK for having many individual championing various agenda as above as long as we are talking about the same ultimate goal. Processes and approaches are, thus secondary.

The Conference has also brought up changing focus of urban challenges from environment to climate change and to integrated land use planning. It must be amazing to Malaysian city managers that evolution has been so actively done in other part of the World, even China has produced many eco cities. Believe me, we have long way to go. Perhaps Putrajaya and Cyberjaya as Green Technologies City as designated by the Federal Government would have to do it fast.

No Plastic Campaign at MBPJ

I am glad that MBPJ's clinic became the first department to decline plastic bag provision. A notice was put in at the dispensary counter to notify patients on the non-provision of plastic bag recently. A move that in conjunction with the No Plastic Campaign launched by the Selangor State Government in early January 2010.

What a wonderful gesture towards environment if MBPJ's canteen starts to do the same, the PR Department distributes the corporate gifts with environmental friendly in mind, the Community Development Department can instill personal responsibility onto residents and in this case the green environment. The list is endless when it comes to what MBPJ as local authority can do in complimenting the efforts on protecting the environment.

Low Carbon Chinese New Year Celebration

The celebration for this year Chinese New Year comes to an end with the life comes back to normal. Students are going to school again this coming Monday and many especially the Hokkien clan will get the festive mood over after the 9th Day of the CNY.

One of the reports attracted me the most is about low carbon celebration. It was reported that in China, many youth have less spending on unsustainable consumption and lifestyle as a good gesture towards carbon emission reduction and challenge of climate change. They went for non-motorised travelling, ate more vegetables, burn less fire works and fire crackers as well as practicing 3R for excessive stuffs. The sudden awareness on green was due to the failure of Copenhagen Roundatable in agreeing to curb the problems of climate change.

In Malaysia, I can sense similar actions for economic reason rather than environmental concern. I went for marketing of roasted meat at SS2 on the new year eve and to my surprise I need not wait for long and went to few shops to buy it. In previous year, I would consider myself lucky for buying the stuff at last minute shopping. Based on last year experience of not getting a restaurant for my family new year eve reunion dinner, I made an advance booking at a restaurant. However, to my pleasant, the restaurant was not fully occupied. Similarly, I was made to understand from the street hawkers that sale for mandarin oranges, decorative items, cookies and etc was not encouraging at all.

While businesses are worried about purchasing pattern during festive season, more people are concern on what can they do for the environment during the festive season. MyCAT, a coalition of NGOs in protecting the tigers and Maybank for example come together to launch a campaign for protecting the tiger during this Lunar "Tiger" Year. MBPJ, Lions Clubs and TetraPak are launching the campaign of collecting beverage packets as festive season always see the number of used packets increasing and being throw away.

Perhaps it is time now for businesses to think about capturing the market for low carbon festive season celebration instead of complaining about losing business sale. The Green Market is obviously lot and more to come.