Category: Environment EN

Want to know why our rivers continue to be polluted despite all efforts to keep them clean? Here is a royal insight from Sultan of Perak Sultan Nazrin Muizzuddin Shah. We have been focusing on hardware (science and technology) and software (policy, regulations and norms), with not enough attention to a critical element in the fight against river pollution: heart-ware. "The health of our river...

Ahead of a groundbreaking treaty to reduce plastic pollution, a group of independent scientists fear that the United Nations is legitimizing industry-backed proposals such as chemical recycling. The plastic crisis has grown exponentially. Despite marketing claims, less than 10% of the plastic waste from recent decades has been recycled. The rest gets incinerated, is buried in landfills or piles...

The UN has released a draft of what might become a landmark agreement to protect human health and the environment. Emphasis on might. GIVEN THE CEASELESS procession of disasters this summer—from heat domes to hurricanes to the fiery destruction of Lahaina—the slow-motion disaster of plastic pollution may not be top of mind. But the United Nations recently released a “zero...

Supposedly eco-friendly cups are still coated with a thin layer of plastic, which scientists have discovered can leach chemicals that harm living creatures. The world goes through hundreds of billions of single-use coffee cups every year – and most aren’t recycled. So major coffee chains’ switch to paper cups is a good step, right? Not quite. A recently published study shows that paper...

Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) calls on the federal and state governments to prohibit mining including of rare earth elements (REE) in environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) such as in permanent forest reserves. This is in response to the government’s new policy to ban the export of REE to safeguard the resources' value chain to build midstream and downstream industries. It is good there is an...

On this International Day of Clean Air for blue skies (7 September 2023), the Consumers Association of Penang calls on the Malaysian authorities to act urgently on air pollution, the biggest environmental health risk of our time. According to the United Nations, over 99% of people today breathe unsafe air. Exposure can lead to stroke, heart and lung diseases, cancer and more. Globally, polluted...