Week 13 : Business mindset

What came to your mind when you see "Business". Business has a strong relationship between goods, services and money. The objective of a business is to measure target and achieve certain amount of money throughout the year.

Too disgusting! Chinese sales of billions of clothes from foreign garbage dump and morgue unexpectedly!

This article was published in 2016. The foreign garbage started to rise rapidly in a short period of time which alert the attention of the outside world. Guangdong Frontier Corps Shenzhen border detachment of China announced, the detection of with the major of old clothes smuggling gangs, destroyed a professional old clothing smuggling gangs, arrested six suspects, confiscated the old clothing 549 tons, amounting to about 11 million yuan (Song Shengnan,2016). 

There are many people in the world judging about China, they claim that China is a garbage dump in the developed countries. However, I think that China has a business minded with smart brain, whereby recycling and disposing second hand cloth. Despite the hygiene issue, this able to recycle underused or unused clothes, extending the useful life of each item.  

Online store became one of the leading channels players in the fashion industry. This business method not only has a positive impact to the environment by reducing the garbage to the landfill, it also stabilize the economic of the country. Whereby higher labor costs are needed to emerge the market efficiently. Besides that, the benefit of recycling clothing will reduce polluting and energy intensive processes required to make a virgin clothes that can reduce the greenhouse gases, due to reduction of machinery used to manufacture. 




References:
http://www.bestchinanews.com/Domestic/1982.html
https://harmony1.com/clothing-textile-recycling/
http://www.charitybags.org.uk/re-use_and_recycling.shtml

Week 13 : Paper consumption impact in Australia

About one third of the garbage is paper. According to the Federal Government's Green Office Guide, approximately 10,000 sheets of A4 paper are used in every Australian office worker every year, and 50% f these paper became rubbish and go straight to the landfill. In our new generation, we are strongly promoting "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" which is very important and applicable into our daily life with paper.

However, it is far way behind of the idea to reduce the paper consumption, even though environmental organisations may talk of green initiatives. It is a heavy burden on Australia's ecological sustainability due to the act of paper-want. The process of paper production required more water and trees to produce one tonne of virgin printer paper, but only 25% of each tree is used to produce the paper product.

As a student, I realized we use a lot of paper for our project submissions. Base on my opinion, government should implement the limitation of paper usage in the university. We may submit our assignments through online or present our work digitally, instead of submitting hard copy such as papers or presentation board.

Besides that, government may introduce new software about free paper-saving. Each student or lecturer may use this software to help save paper by removing wasteful content when printing and reformatting the documents to print double sided with more efficiently.

By using recycled paper instead of virgin printer paper able to improve the sustainability for the environment. It can also reduce the cost by using recycled paper which made from non-tree sources such as bamboo, banana, hemp and etc. Students may also use laptop or notepad to take note in order to reduce the usage of notebook or paper.


References:
https://individualizedfunding.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/file000465594297.jpg
http://www.wikihow.com/Save-Paper-in-School
http://www.sustainablelivingguide.com.au/work/save-paper-and-forests
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/E1E64A4DB813BC8BCA25732C00207FF7?opendocument
http://www.australianscience.com.au/environmental-science/paper-consumption-impact-in-australia/

Week 12 : Food Wastage

Food wastage is one of the major issue we are facing in world wide. According to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about one third of food produced in the world are for human consumption every year, however approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted and go to the landfill. One-fourth of the food lost able to be save and feed approximately 870 million hungry people in the world. 

I came across to watch a cooking show called MasterChef, I was always wondering and question myself - What happen to the ingredients that didn't get to pick by the contestants at the end of each episodes? Will they throw it away? Or does it get to distribute to the team crew?

I found out that the leftover ingredients will be pack and send it to SecondBite, which is a food programs across Australia doing charity work and distribute food to those community who need it the most. The amount of  ingredients donated from MasterCheft to SecondBite, able to provide about 40,00 meals every day.

Personally, I think that MasterCheft is a very thoughtful production team. They not only produce such wonderful show to the audience, at the same time they do also doing charity to vulnerable people who need help. MasterCheft prove that we able to take control of our food waste in and easy and effective way, which able to create effective way to have a positive impact to the environment and community. The economic will also be more stable as the cost of waste disposal and over-purchasing is lower. Hence, everyone start taking action to help saving food will make a difference in this world and create a better world.

References:
Coxarchitecture.com.au
https://www.foodbank.org.au/2013/06/03/masterchef-foodbank/
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/what-happens-to-all-of-the-uneaten-food-on-masterchef/news-story/3d7165dbf04909d9c54a5d0f6544ac4d
https://theconversation.com/australian-communities-are-fighting-food-waste-with-circular-economies-64424
http://c8.alamy.com/comp/F4CT9R/new-delhi-india-16th-oct-2015-participants-pick-ingredients-during-F4CT9R.jpg
http://www.thrill.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Hamper-Charity-400x266.jpg

Week 12 : Plastic

"You’ve never seen such an amazing collection in all your life! Toys of every kind to thrill and delight you – quaint old toys, brilliant new ones, strange toys, familiar toys, wonderful toys… an attraction for young and old! "

Young generation nowadays like to play toys that come in variety of shapes, sizes and colours. Young kids will be playing around with the toys with one another. However, how long will they be playing it? When they reach the certain age, they will be stop playing toys and divert attention to other items such as laptop, gaming device and smartphone. 

Plastic waste is increasing everyday and resulted environment impacts, which affect human health, wildlife and global warming. By designing end-of-life recyclable and increase recycling capacity can control the production of virgin plastic. Community may make a difference to reduce the production of plastic, whereby the change of consumer behavior. Consumer play an important role to minimize the use of short lived applications of plastic.

The production of making plastic toys should be reduce or terminated in order to save our planet. Plastic is a growing disaster because its is made from petroleum or non-renewable resources, The process of manufacturing plastic caused pollute air, land, water and the exposed worker will be influence by the toxic chemical which will result many diseases. 

The toxic chemical release from the plastic couldn't be seen by our naked eyes, however it is present in the air at various locations in the world. It will be transfer from one area to another by the air and water. Government should start implement plans and rethink the management model of the production of plastic disposal on the landfill. Its is unsustainable and limited the land resources that can be used for future development.  

References:

https://www.lifewithoutplastic.com/store/how_plastics_affect_the_environment
http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/plastickills.html?gclid=CjwKEAjwvMnJBRCO2NSu-Puc6AUSJAAf-OSUNqWuvAMIeuIdREnVABCfLwhZmgydl0-6s0jdDdpLuRoCfQ_w_wcB
http://www.dhresource.com/260x260/f2/albu/g4/M01/0B/F8/rBVaEFdcBeKAQ7wyAANfClRq5YI476.jpg

Week 11 : Water usage

Temperatures in Malaysia is getting higher and higher nowadays, this result serious water shortage last year in May regarding to an article by Peak Johnson. In order to protect 100,000 students from temperature above 98 degrees Fahrenheit, the Malaysian government decided to closed more than 250 schools across the country. Water levels in reservoirs are falling rapidly and caused several states facing a water crisis which forced to implement water rationing.     

Rainwater is consider an everlasting free source that can be acquired naturally. However, the climate change and the number of population is increases all over the world, with water pollution that is getting more serious, the demand for processed supply water also increases. 

By using the water in a sustainable way may maintain a balance between its demand and supply. Rainwater harvesting is one of the simplest, most traditional and sustainable method to save the water and reusing it for both residential and commercial building. Rainwater that is collected can be reuse for planting water, washing toilet or the floor. This able to reduce the energy used by pumping the pressure on processed supply water which enhance the green living. 

The diagram above showed the percentage of water consumption of our daily usage. 

Even though the global is covering 70% of water, but there are only 2.5% that is fresh water. With the water shortage issue, we cannot forgo the fact that we should start planning and implement conserving fresh clean water. As an architecture student, I personally think that we have the responsible to help mitigate global climate change by helping conserve the water through our design in a building. By giving back the society throughout our design, rainwater harvesting and gray water usage able to reduce the usage of fresh water. Green toilet specification does also help conserve usage within the society indirectly. Therefore, we play an important role to be part of water conservation as well. 

References:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ8cyqEd9Dd3jwrXAnF3MkWK1b4k9st8G6OJq3WFYOwwchxdlQ0gA

http://www.yourhome.gov.au/sites/prod.yourhome.gov.au/files/images/W-Rainwater-PressureSupplySubmersiblePump-01_fmt.png

https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/721357/

https://www.wateronline.com/doc/malaysia-faces-long-term-water-crisis-0001

https://ecologyartisans.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/san-diego-graywater-system-diagram.png

Week 11 : Illegal land clearing

I came across with a news back in 2014, "Malaysia government loses millions due to illegal land clearing", published by Bernama. “It is not some small activity, there are areas where the activity is done in a syndicate manner,” said by Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir to the reporter. 

As a Malaysian, this article reminds me of seeing land clearing wherever I go in Malaysia. Malaysia is one of the wonderful country which has a lot of natural resources. However, the weak enforcement of the government resulting such incident being uncontrolled, and there wasn't a good solution to control this from happening.

Nowadays, our climate is changing rapidly and unexpectedly which is threatening the people, animals and vegetation. Cutting down forests is polluting the atmosphere and warming our global, there are no vegetation able to absorb the emission gases, resulting extreme weather with higher temperature to our planet.

Malaysia government should implement regulation and long-term financial incentives in order to protect native land and vegetation. As a future designer, I believe that we able to make a difference and take the responsible of stopping land clearing. We can rebuilt a new building from an abandon land or renovate from old building, instead of clearing new land for constructing a new building.

With the principle of give and take, we must give it back to the nature if we used the land. By planting more tree or designing a green building able to create positive impact to the environment. Federal and state government should plan some long-tern policy and consistency which can counterbalance between development and vegetation.




References:
http://www.wwf.org.au/what-we-do/climate?gclid=CjwKEAjwvMnJBRCO2NSu-Puc6AUSJAAf-OSUV1XTaEy0pUWyTNo68BI36UycZ8jdkjyzpNj0rTMZxhoCT0Xw_wcB#gs.VPaPfeY
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/perak-state-government-loses-millions-due-to-illegal-land-clearing
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/address-illegal-land-clearing-locals-tell-penang-govt

Week 10 : Climatic design

Climate scientists have been speaking about the need of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent temperature increases and less livable future. As an architecture student, I know how important of designing energy efficient buildings toward the environmental. We do not design a building based on its appearance, instead the adaption between the building and the climatic are the key point. A report issued in June 2009 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)—which coordinates climate change research of 13 federal agencies and operated as the U.S. Climate Change Science Program from 2002 through 2008 under the George W. Bush presidency—estimates that global average temperatures have risen approximately 1.5ºF (0.8ºC) since before the Industrial Revolution and could rise another 2ºF–11ºF (1.1ºC–6.1ºC) by the end of this century, based on modeling of a variety of greenhouse gas emissions levels, mitigation efforts, and economic scenarios.

I had studied the climatic design of a traditional malay house last semester and it inspired me how and what do I have to take concern when I'm designing a building.

1. Building Material
Building material plays an important role and will affect the sustainability of a building. Lightweight construction of wood or other natural materials have excellent thermal insulator which can cool the the building. Modern houses used concrete, bricks or tiles that can higher thermal capacity, thus it will store heat in the building.

2. Layout
Traditional malay house has a random layout design instead of parallel rigid patterns. Randomly arranged able to increase the wind velocity where the wind can flow through in between the houses which will not reduce the latter path substantially.

3. Ventilation of roof spaces

The provision of ventilation joints and panels in the roof construction allows wind to pass through smoothly. Where the hot air rises to the roof and able to flow out from the house instead of circulating in the house. 

4. Vegetation
Tall vegetation not only able to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, it also provides good shade to the house without blocking the passage of winds at the house level.

5. Ventilation at body level
The velocity of wind increases with altitude, especially at a higher level. Therefore, big openings at the body level in the house will not restrict the air movement in the house. It will increase the brightness in the house as well to reduce the usage of artificial lightings.

6. Orientation

The longer surface area of the house should be facing east-west direction to minimize direct exposed to solar radiation as tropical countries are hot and humid weather. This able to reduce the usage of air conditioning. 

Global warming is getting more serious, it is hotter and getting more frequent heat waves: sea level
rises due to the melting glaciers:water sources is drought. These changes will vary from region to region and further consequences are on their way. Therefore, climatic design has to be apply in every schematic stage improve the air circulation or lighting and reduce the usage of electric appliances.



References:
https://www.buildinggreen.com/feature/design-adaptation-living-climate-changing-world
http://www.yourhome.gov.au/housing/adapting-climate-change
http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=envirohp
https://swazischool.wordpress.com/2012/09/