The government mandates a minimum of 10% for green spaces in new commercial and housing developments around Malaysian cities. But that amount is precious little. So says an architect, Alan Teh. “The design of many high-rise buildings tend to alienate people, meaning they don’t get to interact with others as…

We’ve pumped massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the planet’s atmosphere, thereby irreversibly altering its climate for the worse. We’ll need to stop doing that. But that alone will no longer be enough. We’ll also need to suck plenty of that CO2 out of the atmosphere and lock it away…

Water contamination is a serious problem in Malaysia not least because polluting water sources is easy but cleaning them up may involve a Herculean task. Yet help is on the way, in the form of science. Scientists at Northwestern University in the US have come up with a cheap and…

Walk along many a street in Malaysia, and you’ll pass mounds of uncollected garbage. Waste disposal services remain rather wanting around the nation. But it’s not always that the municipal garbage collectors have fallen behind with their jobs. Malaysians have a propensity for littering and dumping trash almost at random….

India is known for many things, but a commitment to environmentalism tends not to be among them. The country has some of the world’s most polluted cities, wildlife crime remains rampant in the land, and natural habitats around the subcontinent have been shrinking alarmingly. Then again, some things are changing…

Splitting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen has been a challenge, especially doing so cheaply. Yet the process is key if we are to improve our use of renewable energy because it can help turn renewable energy into fuel directly without adding to the amount of CO2 in the…

Chickens. Don’t we just love them? Chickens are a regular staple of Malaysian diets, and for good reason: they’re tasty and inexpensive. Yet anyone who has raised chickens knows that like all animals they produce a lot of, erm, waste. Chicken droppings, especially in mass at poultry farms, can pollute…

Chalk up another seminal success for renewable energy. Thanks to a spell of windy days with lots of sunshine recently, California reached a renewable energy milestone one day by producing two-thirds (67.2%) of the state’s electricity from renewable sources. Add in hydropower facilities, and the result is more impressive still:…

Air pollution is everywhere there is air these days. Like other forms of pollution, air pollution is pervasive and getting increasingly worse. But what if you could put it to good use? What if we could turn at least some of it into a source of power? Belgian scientists have done…

If the city of Nanjing is known for anything, it’s definitely not a clean and green environment. In the capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, air quality hovers at dangerously high levels all year round. At times it’s not uncommon for air pollution to get so bad that the sky turns pink…

A solution to the scourge of plastic waste around the planet may come from an unlikely source: worms. Wax worms, to be precise. Federica Bertocchini, a European scientist who is an amateur beekeeper, recently discovered that Galleria mellonella grubs, which are small parasitic creatures that feed on beeswax inside honey combs, also chow down…

Imagine if you could power your smartphone and laptops with solar energy so their batteries would never run out of power. Ladies and gentlemen, here comes a brand-new electrode that could help you do just that by increasing solar energy storage by … wait for it … a stunning 3,000%. A team of researchers at RMIT…

In a little over a decade, Malaysia will be a regional hub for electric vehicles. Come 2030, the country will boast some 100,000 electric cars and 2,000 electric buses. Nor will owners lack for charging stations: there will be 125,000 of those around the country. This is according to Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister…

Wearable technologies are becoming increasingly popular: smartwatches, fitness bands, virtual reality headsets. According to some industry experts, by 2020 the wearables market will be worth $34 billion. Wearables that replicate the features of smartphones are cool gadgets. But can they also be tools for sustainability? The answer is yes. Recycling old technologies With…

Biri buds resemble makeshift traffic cones and at first glance they may not look like much. Yet they can do a world of difference in stressed marine ecosystems. The buds are named after the Philippine island where a small group of environmentalists has been trying out a type of artificial reef in the surrounding waters and…

We’re getting better and better at harnessing the power of the sun. In 2015, the Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic rolled out the prototype of a rooftop solar panel that set a new world-record of 22.5% for module conversion efficiency with mass-produced solar panels. Before long, a new record was set at 25.6%. Now here comes yet…