Can You Live Without Plastic Bags?

About 95% in Malaysia will say no. Why? They think they cannot live without it. Ok It is kind of true because plastic bags are really light and durable and they do not take much space. For example, you want to bring a piece of bread to your college or office to eat, but all the Tupperware are big and bulky, you just want to keep your bread clean, so you will take the small white plastic bag for food and tadah! Save space and it's clean.

How about buying take aways food? Polystyrene box ( this is so bad for the environment and health ), then you want some chili sauce, so they pack it in the small cute plastic bags for you to bring it home, you want the sweet sauce for your BBQ pork, another small plastic bag for the sauce. Then that shop sells their food really well, i wonder in one day how many small plastic bags like those for the sauce have they distributed to people. Besides that, pasar malam ( night market ), so many variety of food! So delicious, all readily packed ( in plastics bags of course ) to be sold. And most of them are dump into the drains after being used.

Don't Just Campaign, Give Us More!

There are a few reasons why Malaysians do not recycle. One of them is that, we just don't care. One more is, we get so little money recycling, so why care? I asked my friend one day if she recycles, and she said no because she get so little. Then yesterday i had 4 bags of plastics bottles which i sent for recycling and all i get back was just rm2 and the bag was 6kg. My mom complained it was so little, can't even cover her petrol money of the journey.

Seriously i don't blame her. Isn't that what most of us feel? But I will still do it because of my future. I don't want to live on a garbage dump by 2020. What is the use of a Vision 2020 when our country will just be a a garbage site.

Norway's First Ecological Prison

I copied and paste this article because i find it very interesting!

The minimum-security Bastoey Prison, on a lush island south of Oslo, this week claimed to have achieved its 10-year goal of being the world's first ecological prison.

The prison, without locked gates or barbed wire, has often been compared to a summer camp, and now operates with solar panels, wood-fire heating instead of oil, strict recycling and ecological food production.

The idea is to help the roughly 115 prisoners learn important values, such as protecting the environment and respecting others, before they return to society.

Selayang Dog Catching Competition

Majlis Perbandaran Selayang organised a dog catching competiton to reduce the number of stray dog at that area. However this competitons encourages cruelty to animals and we have our responsibility to protect them as we are humans with a heart. So please sign this online petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/doghunt1/petition.html
Thank you.

Well, just read the newspaper, i am glad that they canceled the competition already. Hope god bless those who put in their effort to stop it from happening.

Energy Saving

Currently I am quite interested on the energy field.

I have thought of a few ideas and i hope it can actually work. Thanks to dee because she inspire me. Haha.

Currently, we are finding for clean energy. I have an idea where we can use wind and cars. It's not putting little fans on the cars to generate electricity ( this was what dee suggested) because it creates more resistance to the moving car, so more energy is used to move the car than the energy gain from the little fans.

Panda Poo Found Useful

Ping pong playing panda poo sculpture

One can never die of no money if they think well enough. A chinese wildlife research found out that panda's poo can be used to make souviniers and they have planned to make their olympic souviniers from it too.

Mexican Volcano As Test Bed For Trees on Mars

Scientist are using the slopes of the volcanoes in Mexico to plant tress and if they can make it, it look like they can plant trees in Mars but with some adjusted conditions such as the raise in air pressure and so on.

The objective of doing this is to of course let trees grow in Mars within 100 years time and provide enough oxygen for organism like us to live there.

Malaysia Try To Clone Endangered Turtles

Malaysia is launching a 9 million ringgit project to clone some of its endangered turtles especially the leatherback turtles. Leatherback turtles used to be found at Rantau Abang, Terengganu. But as the years pass by, their number has decreased tremendously together with other species of turtles.

Their number are decreasing because of the illegal hunting of turtles where fisher mans kill them to make souvenirs out of their shells, selling their meat to restaurant and also their eggs, pollution and development of coastal areas.

Degree Courses For Environment Lovers!

Do some of you feel that you were born in this world for a reason? Like God have sent you to do some thing, some thing BIG for the people, like a savior?

Or maybe you like to learn more about the environment, you didn't know there are courses offered by universities around the world just for people like you ( and also me =D).

Well here are a few courses listed for you together with the description of what you will get from it. Maybe you might want to consider of earning money through saving the environment. Make life more meaningful yea?

The Effects Of Global Warming.

We know what cause it and how to prevent it but we don't really know how will it effect us. We just see people panic without understanding why are they acting that way. And we go panic too. Monkey see monkey do.

Well, here are the effects of GW ( global warming ):

Extreme weathers- the green house gasses traps the heat from the sun light causing the amount of heat in the atmoshpere of our earth to increase. Thus increasing the temperature. Not just a little bit but at some place a lot such as in the dessert. Now most of the dessert are inhabitable for humans and animals unlike before.

The Good and The Bad of Ozone

Do you know what is the ozone layer?
It is made up of 3 oxygen unlike the oxygen that we breathe ( 2 oxygen ). It is formed naturally at the stratosphere of our earth. It protects us from the dangerous UV rays from the sun which can cause skin cancer to humans, destroy crops and kill some marine life too.

This ozone layer sound really nice to humans. However it is actually destructive to us when it is formed at the troposphere where it is nearer to human beings and life on earth. But this ozone layer is not naturally formed, but form from air pollution created by automobile exhaust and emissions from factories and power plants.

This ozone which form unnaturally is called the bad ozone. But why is it bad?

Be a Volunteer at SPCA Selangor!

If you love animals so much, why not be a volunteer at SPCA Selangor!

The SPCA was established in 1958 to protect animals in Selangor and the Federal Territory. Today they have a wide range of activities all with one common aim: to protect animals and alleviate suffering. All of the following would not be possible without dedicated volunteers, these include:

• animal home
  
• public relations


• fund raising
  

Volunteer duties to choose from:

• kennel/cage cleaning- includes removing faeces, cleaning and disinfecting, relaying newspaper and providing fresh water


• feeding-under instructions only


• bathing-under instructions only


• grooming- especially long haired animals, under instructions only


• socialising- with either dogs or cats, sitting with, patting, walking getting to know animals and their habits and quirks


• training- along with SPCA training sessions


• kennel guide- assisting the public when choosing an animal, assessing the family who want to adopt and match the most suitable animal for their needs


• general house keeping varies from washing windows, mopping floors to grass cutting or dusting counters and arranging leaflets
  

Volunteers under 18 years old must have parental/guardian permission to volunteer.
Shelter volunteers are under the direction of SPCA staff- all volunteers will be assigned to a member of staff to work with for that day.

You can also help SPCA by doing fundraising or Public relations ( designing, manning booths , SPCA group guide, or giving information talks ).

To volunteer, you have to give your name, age, address, home telephone number, hand phone number and your email address.

To know more, you can go to this centre which is called SPCA Selangor, at Jalan Kerja Ayer Lama, Ampang Jaya, 68000 Ampang, Selangor.
Tel: 03 42565312 or 03 42535179
Fax: 03 4252 8382
Email: spca@streamyx.com
Website: http://www.spca.org.my/

SPCA needs our help as they receive no government funding and relies solely on generous donation from the public. Each year they need approx. RM 500 000 to maintain the animal home.

There is always something we can do to help them, everything is valuable, no help is too small!

" We hope you can enjoy volunteering with SPCA; every one at SPCA whether we have 2 legs or 4, warmly welcomes you! "

Walk The Talk

Eversince I have been writing posts for this blog, I have learned a lot of things. What is the use of learning it without applying it. Might as well don't learn it at all.

So I try to apply what I learned. I went to Fraser's Hill last weekend. I read a lot of articles where they tell people to bring along trash bag to pick up rubbish on the trails. I forgot to bring but i found some plastic bags along the way. So i pick up what i saw.

Animal and wildlife foreva!!

Writing this blog is really so fun because i get to learn so many things which I really enjoy and love. Everyday I learn something new from my post. Feeling content at this moment..

Haha! Anyway here are a few animals and wildlife products which we should avoid buying. Why? Because we love them so much, we live for them and they live for us. Most importantly, we depend on one another to live hapilly ever after...

Illegal Trade on ebay

The eBay have always been useful for people. However good things are usually used for wrong things too.

Illegal traders have been using the Internet to sell wildlife products. Many of us know that buying wildlife products is wrong but some times buying items from eBay cannot tell you exactly what you are buying.

It is sad to say that some times our own carelessness can cause extinction of the animals.

So if you feel that what I wrote is true, together ( hand in hand ) we can help these wildlife by

1)Write an e-mail to eBay and draw attention to any dubious offers you come across.
Banned products are advertised every day on eBay. Demand that eBay remove illegal wildlife offers from the auction site immediately.

2)Obtain information about the origins of products that involve the death of wild animals.
Learn more about the trade in live animals and the cruelty and suffering that is associated with it. Form a group to campaign against the wildlife trade! Share your knowledge with friends and family and make them aware of this important issue.

3)Keep your eyes open when surfing the Internet!
If you come across online offers on the Internet dealing in wildlife products or live protected animal species, then you should report these activities to your national authorities, or the main place to report illegal wildlife can be found at: http//www.fws.gov/le/

4)Don’t buy wild animals or wildlife products online.
Consumer demand is what drives the wildlife trade. The sale of endangered animals will only stop when there are no buyers. Make a conscious buying decision. The only sure way to act is to not participate in this trade.

5)Set a good example: dispense with wildlife products!
Wildlife should not be considered as commodities to be traded. Animals should not pay with their lives so that people can own luxury goods. Regardless of whether an item was a souvenir, a gift or an heirloom, do not resell it. Send these products to us. IFAW will use them as part of its PR work or collect them as evidence. Protect endangered species!

Chocolate The Next Green Fuel???? Maybe Brown..

The best fuel now is not biodiesel or ethanol or what but it's actually hydrogen. However, the production of hydrogen gas is really expensive and very little amount of it can be produce at a short period of time.

Well, it is the best fuel because it only produces water only. So you can drink water from your car. Hot water.

However microbiologist may have found the answer!! The yummy way!!

CHOCOLATE!!

Ways To Reduce Waste

We are running out of landfill site. Landfill site are one of the source of methane gas which is toxic. So it is important to reduce waste. I found many ways to reduce waste while reading the news paper that day. i thought maybe i could share what I have read for those who do not read the newspaper =D

Don't add waste heaps.

Separate paper, plastics, metal, glass and aseptic carton for recycling. If you cannot drop it at the recycling centre, leave them outside for the garbage collector. Recycling save the landscape of from dumps, reduce usage of energy and raw materials and prevents emission of methane.

Top 9 Ways To Reduce Global Warming

Many people care about the environment but they just don't know what to do. So here are some ways to help you help the earth =D

1) Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Do your part to reduce waste by choosing reusable products instead of disposables. Buying products with minimal packaging (including the economy size when that makes sense for you) will help to reduce waste. And whenever you can, recycle paper, plastic, newspaper, glass and aluminum cans. If there isn’t a recycling programme at your workplace, school, or in your community, ask about starting one. By recycling half of your household waste, you can save 2,400 pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

2) Use Less Heat and Air Conditioning

3) Change A Light Bulb
Wherever practical, replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. Replacing just one 60-watt incandescent light bulb with a CFL will save you $30 over the life of the bulb. CFLs also last 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs, use two-thirds less energy, and give off 70 percent less heat.If every U.S. family replaced one regular light bulb with a CFL, it would eliminate 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases, the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the road.


4) Drive Less Drive Smart
Less driving means fewer emissions. Besides saving gasoline, walking and biking are great forms of exercise. Explore your community’s mass transit system, and check out options for carpooling to work or school.
When you do drive, make sure your car is running efficiently. For example, keeping your tires properly inflated can improve your gas mileage by more than 3 percent. Every gallon of gas you save not only helps your budget, it also keeps 20 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

5) Buy Energy-Efficient Products
When it’s time to buy a new car, choose one that offers good gas mileage. Home appliances now come in a range of energy-efficient models, and compact florescent bulbs are designed to provide more natural-looking light while using far less energy than standard light bulbs.
Avoid products that come with excess packaging, especially molded plastic and other packaging that can't be recycled. If you reduce your household garbage by 10 percent, you can save 1,200 pounds of carbon dioxide annually

6) Use Less Hot Water
Set your water heater at 120 degrees to save energy, and wrap it in an insulating blanket if it is more than 5 years old. Buy low-flow shower heads to save hot water and about 350 pounds of carbon dioxide yearly. Wash your clothes in warm or cold water to reduce your use of hot water and the energy required to produce it. That change alone can save at least 500 pounds of carbon dioxide annually in most households. Use the energy-saving settings on your dishwasher and let the dishes air-dry.


7) Use the "Off" Switch
Save electricity and reduce global warming by turning off lights when you leave a room, and using only as much light as you need. And remember to turn off your television, video player, stereo and computer when you're not using them.
It’s also a good idea to turn off the water when you’re not using it. While brushing your teeth, shampooing the dog or washing your car, turn off the water until you actually need it for rinsing. You’ll reduce your water bill and help to conserve a vital resource.

8) Plant A Tree
If you have the means to plant a tree, start digging. During photosynthesis, trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. They are an integral part of the natural atmospheric exchange cycle here on Earth, but there are too few of them to fully counter the increases in carbon dioxide caused by automobile traffic, manufacturing and other human activities. A single tree will absorb approximately one ton of carbon dioxide during its lifetime.


9) Encourage Others to Conserve
Share information about recycling and energy conservation with your friends, neighbors and co-workers, and take opportunities to encourage public officials to establish programs and policies that are good for the environment.
These 10 steps will take you a long way toward reducing your energy use and your monthly budget. And less energy use means less dependence on the fossil fuels that create greenhouse gases and contribute to global warming.

If you feel that you can do all of these listed up there, then good for you and us. However if you can't do many of these it's ok, as long as you make an effort to help the environment =D remember, everyone plays a big role when it comes to saving mother nature...

Think Before You Throw?

Yea I think before i throw. That day i brought the plastics bottles that i have kept for almost a year to the recycling centre and also water bottles from the house. All in about 5 big plastic bags. I didn't know that they weigh it like weighing books and newspaper too. All in I only get rm2.20 as my pocket money. I thought I could get more like rm5 but not just rm2.20. haha. They should weigh plastic items differently...

But going to the recycling centre near our house is fun. It's my second time going there. My first time was giving them stacks of our old school books and note books which students won't be using anymore after our SPM. I got back rm 8. When i reached there , there were cars coming in and out just to sell plastic bottles and i was a bit touched because with that little amount of plastic bottles, they won't get much, they do it because they care. Maybe you would say that they are very poor, so they grab what ever they can, but these people drive posh cars yea know?

Eco Suicide Tourism

Another post about global warming.

If you go to Greenland, you think that you hear thunder. But in Greenland, they don"t have thunder there. It's the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If you are lucky you might see one break apart.

Anyway that wasn't what I wanted to write about.

Well, there is no need to say that the ice in Greenland is melting because I suppose that people know about it.

We need more happy thoughts =D

At least the warmer climate there now is doing wonders to fishermans there. What a sad thing to say.

Read this:

Warmer waters entice seawolf and cod to swim farther north in the Atlantic into Greenlandic nets. In this Disko Bay town, the world's iceberg capital, the harbour is now open year-round because winter is no longer cold enough to freeze it solid.

Things Which I have Never Thought Of Before..

Toothbrushes

Do you like to brush your teeth? Are you a keen brusher? For a keen brusher, do you follow your dentist advise to change your toothbrush EVERY 3 months? Well, I have.

The landfill sites are now having problem where there are too many toothbrushes there. As we all know, they are made from plastic so they can't decompose. So guess what manufacturers are doing to tackle this problem?

When consumers buy these toothbrushes, they will get a postage paid envelope to send the brushes back to their manufacturer when they are not in use anymore. They don't have these in Malaysia though. Or you can just dump it in the recycling bin. We can do this though. Anyway returned tooth brushes will then likely be reborn again as raw material for a picnic table, deck, boardwalk or other durable long-lasting product.

They also have created brushes with replaceble heads.

Non plastic tooth brushes are also in the market. They are made from 'cellulose derived from sustainable yield forest.'

You can also make bracelet out of your tooth brush taught by guru Carol Duvali. I am serious. Not joking.


Harry Potter Book 7!!!

I never knew Harry Potter could be involved in green issues!!! He greens!!

Actually this was what happened:
During the release of HP6, publisher Scholastic is said that didn't use enough recycle paper. So Greenpeace ( an international environmental organisation ) urged consumers to boycott Scholastic and to purchase the novel from Raincoast Books, J.K. Rowling’s Canadian publisher, which printed the Canadian edition of the book on recycled paper.

At the time, Greenpeace said that Scholastic could have saved 217,475 mature trees by printing the 10.8 million copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on recycled paper. But of course it didn't work on HP crazy fans. A book is just a book.

Anyway Scholastic publisher obviously took the environmental concerns to heart and worked with the Rainforest Alliance.

Details of Scholastic’s environmental commitment for the new Harry Potter book include:
At least 65 percent of the 16,700 tons of paper used for the first printing will be FSC-certified, which means the paper comes from forests that are managed in a socially and environmentally responsible way.
Totaling nearly 22 million pounds, this is the largest purchase of FSC-certified paper ever to be used in a single book printing.
All of the paper used in the printing will contain at least 30 percent post-consumer waste fiber, with much of that verified by FSC standards as well.
A deluxe edition of the new book, with a first printing of 100,000, will be printed on paper that contains 100 percent post-consumer waste fiber.

To cut things short, many trees have been saved. HP7 is friendly to the environment.

End Product Inhibition

We shouldn't worry about the Earth getting destroyed. The Earth can never get destroyed unless some one fill the core of the Earth with a lot of dynamites and burst this planet into pieces.

But the main concern is us and other creatures ( we are creatures too ) who are living here on this planet.

Every time when the Earth reaches a bad state, it will restart by its own. It's natural. It's the circle of life for the Earth. There will be bad weathers, volcanoes erupting, earth quakes, tsunami, major cooling of the earth, a total wipe down of the organisms living on this planet.

Pork Without Its Mother

Artificial pork.

Cool. haha. Dutch scientist now are in their pursuit to create pork meat in their lab.
They feel that it is wrong to rare animals just to feed human, so they have decided to make pork in a scientific way.

Trying to make meat without killing animals sound a bit weird though.

Anyway they thought of creating artificial meat is because raring animals gives a lot of problems to the environment. Like they said " Animals need to grow. They produce many things that we do not eat."

So they took minimising waste to a whole new level.

So how do they do it?

Under the process, researchers first isolate muscle stem cells, which have the ability to grow and multiply into muscle cells. Then they stimulate the cells to develop, give them nutrients and exercise them with electric current to build bulk.

After perfecting that process, scientists will then need to figure out how to layer tissues to add more bulk, since meat grown in Petri dishes lacks the blood vessels needed to deliver nutrients through thick muscle fibres.

And then there is the question of fat, to add flavour.

Chicken flavored pork =D

Well, some people might not accept how it is made, but the scientist said that all these while we have been eating processed food, so this is not much different from it too =D In fact, it is cleaner in my opinion.

Cruel Doings In Classroom.

Have you learn Moral when you were in secondary school? Or gone for religious studies before?

I remember once i read a comic strip in my text book. The student ask the teacher how does the internal organ of a bird look like. Then the teacher explain to her. Then one of the student suggested that why don't they catch a bird and dissect it to see for real. Then the teacher said that it was not a good thing to do to kill an animal just to see the internal organs.

It sounds rational right?

But what were we doing in our biology labs cutting up rabbits, mouse and frogs just to satisfy our curiosity?

Lets Start Burying CO2!!

Recently more people are aware about the global warming issue because it is said that we are at a crisis now where the earth is so warm now, it is melting the ice at the north and south pole causing cute polar bears to drown. And the sea level will rise and many countries will be underwater by 2030. Maybe Malaysia too unless it breaks off from the soil of the deep earth and start to float like a huge piece of floating land..

Well, actually there is nothing wrong about having a warm earth. Many people like it that way better actually. But it is not the warmth that is frightening environmentalist but the rapid change of temperature of the Earth that has became our concern.

Origins Of My Interest

After PMR, I didn't know if I want to take biology as a subject for my SPM. My science teacher asked what was my ambition when I didn't know what was my role in life at that time =D

Learning biology was fun. I get to learn many stuff I didn't know. It was the art of life.

I didn't want to be a doctor. Too many doctors in this world now especially in Malaysia. Other field need people too, not just in medicine. Competition is high too. Moreover I have never like doctors since young.