NEC To Focus On New Ideas For 'Green Brunei'

Asia Inc Forum has officially announced the date for the next National Environment Conference, and also given details on what is to be expected.

Now in its fourth year, the National Environment Conference (NEC) will take place at the Rizqun International Hotel on June 8, with the theme "Green Brunei: New Ideas for a Sustainable Country".

The conference will focus on the state of the environment and the priorities for Brunei including water, marine conservation, disaster preparedness, green business sustainability and youth advocacy.

It will also feature overseas speakers from Singapore and Australia who will assess how we can best adapt to our changing climate.

The conference will coincide with the "Youth Go Green Initiative Awards", an event held to recognise the contribution of the young citizens of Brunei in promoting environmental awareness on the effects of climate change and global warming as well as stimulating their creative minds in taking action to save the environment for their future through innovative green solutions.

The 2011 Youth Go Green Initiative Awards will be founded under the theme "Saving the World, Saving Our Future", and is organised in collaboration with the Science, Technology and Environment Partnership (STEP) Centre, Ministry of Education.

Another feature at the upcoming NEC will be the "Green Showcase", an exhibition of initiatives or programmes by Asia Inc Forum's corporate partners and local businesses in promoting products and services, which will be open to the public.

Also to be showcased are the outstanding and shortlisted entries of the 2011 Youth Go Green Initiative Awards and projects by the next generation, including the "ISB Short Eco Video Competition" which aims to educate the public about the importance and relevance of taking action and adopting a green lifestyle.

For more information and to register for the conference, the awards or the exhibition, you can visit Asia Inc Forum's website, www.asiaincforum.com.

Oil on the Po

The Po river, Italy's longest river and known as the lifeline of their agriculture, was deliberately polluted 2 days ago by what the president of the Monza province described as "eco-terrorrists".

The oil-spill, several kilometres long, moved downstream with the Lambro river from Villasanta, crossed the town of Monza, passed by the Milan area and then flowed into the Po. That sounds like a very long way down. The spill involved at least 260,000 gallons of oil made up of diesel and home-heating oil, both known to be heavy and extremely sticky. Despite efforts to contain the slick with absorbent pads and the closure of the hydraulic locks, the oil seeped from the Lambro into the Po. Inhabitants in the region were advised not to drink tap water as it is contaminated.

I cannot imagine the amount of anger and sadness felt by the affected people. How selfish can a person be to cause an oil-spill on water, which is one of the most important source for human lives. We are already depleting our water and food resources and yet there are people out there who would destroy the necessities of life because of them being upset lil brats and wanting to get their message across!

What about the innocent animals or fish that depend on the river for their survival! And of cos the government himself seemed more concerned about how it would affect the country's GDP as it accounts for 40% of Italy's GDP. I would give the perpetrator a good spanking and make him have a taste of his own medicine if it was up to me. This news reallly p****d me off!

My heart goes out to those affected by the oil-spills and of course the lives lost in Chile....

Tips of the Day: Teach your kids young on the importance of recycling and not to be wasteful. Bring them along when you're throwing your recycling away so it'll make it a habit for them.

Water Conservation Facts: By the Numbers

- 2.5 gallons: The amount of water per person much of the world is allocated.

- 400 gallons: The amount of water per person used by the average American citizen; 30 percent of this is used for outdoor purposes, such as watering the lawn.

- 70 percent: The amount of worldwide water use that is allocated to farming; most of these farming irrigation systems operate at only 40 percent efficiency. According to a 2002 article by Lester Brown, aquifers are depleting all over the world—in China by 2-3 metres per year. In the US, the Ogallala aquifer is shrinking rapidly. In India, aquifers are going down by 3 metres per year, in Mexico by 3.3 meters per year.

- 263: The number of rivers that either cross or demarcate international political boundaries, in addition to countless aquifers. According to the Atlas of International Freshwater Agreement, 90 percent of countries in the world must share these water basins with at least one or two other states. Major conflicts such as Darfur have been connected to water shortages, and lack of access to clean water.

- 1430: Gallons of water per capita in the United States; only 100 gallons of that is household use per person as most is used for agriculture, according to water expert Peter Gleick.

- 88 percent: Of deaths from diarrhea are caused from unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and lack of access to sanitation; this translates to more than 1.5 million of the 1.9 million children under five who perish from diarrhea each year. This amounts to 18% of all under-five deaths and means that more than 4,000 children are dying every day as a result of diarrhoeal diseases.

- $11.3 billion: The amount of money required to provide basic levels of service for drinking and waste water in Africa and Asia.

- $35 billion: the amount of money spent on bottled water in the most developed countries in the world.

- 1.5 million: Barrels of crude oil used for making PET water bottles, globally. This is enough oil to fuel 100,000 American cars for a year.

- 2.7 tons: The amount of plastic used to bottle water. 86 percent become garbage or litter.

Why Should I Choose Reusable over Recyclable??

Ever heard this? "I don't need to carry my own reusable water bottle. I'll just recycle this disposable one later."

It might sound like a reasonable compromise, but let's not delude ourselves here. Sure, recycling can have a green impact, but it's important to be able to triage one supposedly green action above another. For the skeptical among you, getting lulled into the recycling catch-all can seem like an easy way to be green -- or, in the case of skeptics among us, feel like you're being green. Add to that that it can be easy to confuse greener and green, and it can become quite problematic.

Recycling vs. reuse turns out to be a matter of perception, most of the time. When you think of recycling, you might think of a shiny, efficient factory where old plastic bottles are processed and turned into new bottles at the snap of a finger; old stuff goes in, new stuff comes out, but that's not the whole story; plastic's chemistry, and a couple of other factors, give the reusable water bottle (and other objects with similar lifecycle designs) a big edge. In short, there's a reason that it's Reduce, then Reuse, then Recycle.

How Plastic Recycling Works
Let's take a look at how plastic recycling works. First, we have to consider where the plastic bottle comes from to begin with. It should surprise no one that plastic is a petroleum product, a non-renewable resource; once the oil gets used to make that plastic, that's pretty much all it will ever be -- there's no going back. When it comes time to recycle it, and you drop it in the blue bin and forget about it, but that's just the beginning. Recycling involves essentially re-melting and re-casting the plastic. Though, manufacturing new plastic from recycled plastic requires two-thirds of the energy used in virgin plastic manufacturing, recycled plastic isn't often used for the same products over and over again.

But, as any chef who has ever tried to re-heat a Hollondaise sauce will tell you, the quality isn't quite as good the second time around; the same goes for plastic. Plastic is made from a series of polymer chains -- you might remember the term from high school chemistry -- and those polymer chains (learn more about them from Wikipedia) often break during the heating and melting process of recycling. What does this mean to you? Plastic is often downcycled as it is recycled, leading to a lower and lower-grade product; eventually, all it's good for is as another space hog in the landfill. And that ain't green, no matter how you look at it.

How Reusing Plastic Bottles (and Other Stuff) Works
Contrast that with reusable water bottle model: You get one (if you prefer plastic, BPA-free, please) and haul it around with you. Enjoy bottle after bottle of fresh, clean, delicious tap water, while cosidering this number: Tap water has less than one percent of the environmental impact of bottled water. Recycling, and bottled water, and most everything else on the planet, does not exist in a vaccuum; that is to say, it is totally unreasonable to just compare the vessels and leave the contents (and everything else associated with them) out of the equation. There really are a million reasons to ditch bottled water.

Bottled water can be a little tricky to avoid entirely, but there's no reason to use it every day, and no reason to think that you can simply recycle your way out of disposability. All of our stuff has to go somewhere, so it's best to keep as much of it with you for as many cycles as possible.