Gamuda Parks partners with MAEKO to launch compost-on-wheels, a composting mobile truck aiming at empowering the community to reduce carbon footprint with better food waste management.

12 November, PETALING JAYA – Greta Thunberg may be the face of climate change activism, but she is not alone. With the increased global concern on climate change, Gamuda Land has taken the matter into their own hands. Its sustainable landscape initiative, Gamuda Parks today announced Compost-on-wheels, a composting mobile truck aiming to empower communities with better food waste management and reduced carbon footprint by diverting their compostables from landfills.

Officiating the launch at Menara Gamuda were Khariza Abd Khalid, Chief Operating Officer of Gamuda Parks and Richard Raj Sebastian, Assistant General Manager of Innovation & Technology, Gamuda Land. In conjunction with the launch was a talk titled “Greencycle – How to manage your waste like a pro”, featuring zero waste living by the 2017 United Nations award recipient Claire Sancelot, and food composting by Chelsea Chee, Founder of MAEKO, a local manufacturer and distributor of food waste composting machines as well as a shadow play performance by Tan Lay Heong, a performing artist using reusable wastes and recycled items.

Committed towards sustainability

Known for its ongoing and long-time commitment towards sustainability, Gamuda Land introduced Gamuda Parks in 2018 – a self-driven pioneering initiative that carries a mandate to deliver, implement, manage, maintain and safeguard the well-being of the living environment in all its developments.

“At Gamuda Land, we are guided by sincerity, committed to act responsibly and motivated by originality where we consciously practise the principle of being ‘mindful’. While Gamuda Parks’ core focus is on biodiversity enhancement, we feel that there is still more we can do for the environment. It spurs us to start looking beyond biodiversity and into other initiatives, one of it being waste management,” said Khariza, adding that Gamuda Parks has, since its inception, collaborated with a panel of experts from Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), Wetlands International Malaysia and AGV Sustainability and ESG Services. The team has since progressively delivered its pledge for biodiversity conservation through ongoing biodiversity audits and data compilation exercises in several Gamuda Land townships, as well as the formulation and publication of Gamuda Parks Biodiversity Policy.

Gamuda Parks Biodiversity Policy governs the conservation of biodiversity and the management of ecosystems through mindful masterplanning, design, development and maintenance of all the Gamuda Land developments. The policy covers the green (flora maintenance), blue (waterscapes) and brown (material management) elements, aiming to encourage robust biodiversity as the best indicator of a healthy ecosystem is the volume and range of different species found within an area.

Expanding into waste management

“Waste management falls under the brown pillar of Gamuda Parks. Through our studies, it was shocking to learn that over 23,000 tonnes of waste is produced each day in Malaysia and only less than 5% is being recycled. If we continue on this trend, the amount is expected to rise to 30,000 tonnes per day by the year 2020. In other words, we could fill Petronas Twin Towers with rubbish in less than 5 days!” Khariza shared that though the Malaysian government has taken much initiatives to fight climate change, there is an immense urgency to stop the source of pollution, which is domestic waste.

Reduce carbon footprint via 6R

With its innate character of building by respecting nature and unwavering determination to reduce carbon footprint, Gamuda Parks has conducted comprehensive methodical research on waste management and several tests in its township before formally announcing its launch of Compost-on-wheels. “Our studies are well referenced with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and the Malaysia’s Roadmap towards Zero Single Use Plastics. Thereon, we began introducing our 6R initiative – Recycle, Rot, Repurpose, Reduce, Refuse and Reuse – to our workplace and our townships.

Part of our sharing includes the right, efficient and clean way of 6R. We also tested the effectiveness of our sharing by installing fabric recycling bins in some of our townships. Last month alone, we collected 1000kg of fabric waste. That assures our direction of tackling waste management by remedying the inherent lack of recycling facilities and building a more discerning community,” said Khariza. With Compost-on-wheels collecting food waste and the plan to re-instill awareness towards recycling in all Gamuda Land’s townships, Gamuda Parks is now full steam ahead to promote its 6R initiatives, truly diversifying and intensifying the waste collection for 6R.

Mindful town-making principles

“We are taking progressive steps to tackle the global problem, and it may take decades for us to raise civic consciousness towards the environment. But it does not stop us from doing what we think is right. The lush greenery and sprawling biodiversity that we see in our older townships like Valencia, for instance, are results of steps taken in the past, taking almost 20 years to verify the effectiveness of our town-making principles. Every step taken now will affect the future. If things are done mindfully and correctly from the start, such as the prevention of waste and pollution, we would gain more in the long run,” concluded Khariza, quoting that Malaysia spends nearly RM1.6 billion per annum to collect solid waste and perform public cleansing, where savings gained from better waste management can be put to better use elsewhere.

Gamuda Parks Compost-on-wheels is now officially adopted in all Gamuda Land’s marketing event and will be moving through all Gamuda Land’s developments. 80% of water can be extracted from the collected food waste for watering plants and the rest of it can be recycled into compost or animal feed. For more information, please visit any Gamuda Land’s sales galleries or log on to gamudaland.com.my/gamudaparks/