Sime Darby Plantation Green Technology: A Sustainable Future Through Responsible Development

COUNTRIES across the globe are making a mass exodus from their current systems and hitting the path towards sustainability. some are further down the path while others are just getting on it. Here in Malaysia, there was a time when greenhouse gases and carbon trapping were the coffee shop conversation of environmental scientists. These days everybody seems to be talking about levels of emission, green vehicles, energy efficient appliances and options in renewable energy. Property owners are weighing in the option of installing photo-voltaic panels when not long ago the thought of harnessing the sun's energy for electricity was very much futuristic. The future has arrived and governments and peoples are acknowledging the fact that sustainability is the way forward.

The word sustainability did not always mean what it does today. Years ago sustainability, especially in the plantation sector was linked to profitability - the ultimate form of sustainability. Nonetheless, there were certain quarters that were beginning to look at things differently and since the early 1990s discussions, conferences and protocols calling for change and better awareness were beginning to gain momentum.

These days, says Syed Mahdhar Syed Hussain, Head of Plantation Quality & Safety Management at Sime Darby Plantation (SDP), the word sustainability has three dimensions: profit, which a company cannot lose sight of; people - the social obligation to the community; and the environment.

"As a plantation company, this concept of sustainability is relatively new to us," he explains. "Not so long ago profitability was the ultimate sustainability. now, we have realised that if we don't care about the people and the environment, the consequences will hit us where it hurts most and we will end up shooting ourselves in the foot."

"Malaysia is on the right track with its green policies and new green laws. our prime minister has made a `moving forward' target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. This is a huge commitment, which is why the government is taking all these steps to ensure that it is met," says Mahdhar.

Planning is inevitable

Sime Darby Plantation is the biggest public listed plantation company in the world and therefore every activity it carries out has far reaching influences and consequences.

The company has a green roadmap to guide it on its way and set clear goals for its sustainable journey. "We're a global company, so this roadmap guides how we operate throughout the world. It includes our upstream and downstream operations," reveals Mahdhar. "It ensures that in whatever we do, we use our best developed practices with regards to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Even the least we can do is initiate 3r programmes - reduce, reuse and recycle - in all our operations worldwide."

The most important element in getting any plan to really work is surely the people; people who are passionate enough to see it through to the end. to ensure SDP's sustainability goals are met, the company needs dedicated people, a structured system and strategic planning.

A strategic direction is critical, so that the company can see where it is going. This is the biggest challenge, according to Mahdhar. Popular belief is that planning is easy and free, but in reality it needs a lot of time, money, dedication and passion.

Structure

Being faithful to green technology and sustainability ideals is surely a challenge for any company. What SDP has done is to take a three-tiered step to ensure that these principles are adhered to: design and develop a methodology to maintain a system that can be implemented and recognised worldwide, carry out continuous training and enforce the system.

This system is called the 3es and the 3ts. the first e is engineering, which is the design and hardware of the system. next is to educate and enforce. The three ts are track, translate and transform.

The company carries out audits and validations to make sure that every aspect of the business is run according to its ideals. A panel of experts tracks and analyses any deviation and improves on it.

SDP's education programmes are supported by external experts as diverse as tenaganita, the NGO that protects migrant worker rights, the Sabah Forestry Department, and public universities.

"All of these policies, programmes and measures are crucial to our sustainability," says Mahdhar. "We cannot single out one as more important than the rest. All of them - water management, pest control, reducing greenhouse gasses - are crucial and interrelated and cannot be taken in isolation."

These policies and measures extend to SDP's affiliates, partners and suppliers all over the world, and are entrenched in the company's corporate governance. The businesses and bodies SDP works with have all been positive about green practices along with SDP.

"Most of them share our view that green technology and sustainability are extremely important for the business," says Mahdhar. "We are in the agriculture businesses whether we like it or not, and if we don't care about the environment we shouldn't be in this business."

Cleaning its own house

Incorporating green technology ideals and sustainability into its business model is certainly a gargantuan task for any company, but it was something SDP chose to do because `it was the right thing to do'.

"Sustainability has a huge impact on the plantation business," says Mahdhar. "Anything that can impact the environment and the climate will ultimately affect us. The weather is what decides the quality and quantity of the yield, so we cannot afford to be ignorant of the scenarios that affect the climate and its ultimate importance to us."

Green technology can mean many things, he continues, but what SDP is focusing on is renewable energy that will reduce the company's carbon emissions, as well as reducing, recycling and reusing its products and byproducts to prevent wastage. the company is also beginning the process of modifying its machines in its mills to use biodiesel instead of fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Even the simplest steps make a difference - the company has initiated programmes on the micro level to reduce usage of paper, printer ink, stationery, water, and electricity in its offices, plantations and housing around the world. the Sime Darby office in Wisma Guthrie, Damansara, for example, has a large tank on its roof to harvest rainwater that is used in the building's toilets. The company set down regulations on how to collect, store and dispose rubber tyres, and set regulations against littering so that there is no rubbish strewn around the estates.

"While we are concentrating on the big things, we cannot lose sight of these small day-today elements," says Mahdhar. Implementing these micro-level measures was certainly full of challenges, the biggest being changing people's mindsets and sorting out the logistics. People had to be educated about how to save, reuse, and separate their garbage. Even the cleaners had to be educated about how and why the garbage was separated into three bins so that they would dispose of it in the proper way.

SDP conducted training and education programmes and put up signs everywhere to initiate the change. bearing in mind the company has more than 80,000 employees, this was a massive undertaking.

"Changing people's mindsets can be done, but of course it will not be done overnight," says Mahdhar. "And we must ensure that every avenue is covered. Sustainable development is a holistic process and every detail makes up a bigger picture. SDP's best developed practices have been formulated over the past 40 years. These include zero burning of the crop to clear the land after harvesting and recycling mill waste back into the system for water maintenance. the estates do not use irrigation in their plantations relying instead on rain and natural watersheds, so the company is keen on water management to ensure natural water resources are not polluted.

Being a large plantation company and a key player in the sector comes with accountability and a sense of responsibility about its carbon footprint.

Carbon footprint is not just about how much carbon the company causes to be emitted into the atmosphere, explains Mahdhar. It is the total carbon emissions plus carbon sequestration (the amount of carbon absorbed by trees) and the carbon stock (the amount of carbon the company has on the ground).

In a palm oil estate, one hectare of trees can contribute up to 21.3 tonnes of oxygen annually. Palm oil is not an annual crop - the trees will grow for 25 years before replanting, so carbon sequestration and oxygen contribution is a big deal.

As for emissions, the biggest component of a plantation is fertiliser. SDP uses nitrogen-based fertiliser, which contains nitrous oxide. One kilogramme of nitrous oxide is equivalent to 313kgs of carbon dioxide when evaporated into the atmosphere. Another component in a plantation is methane from effluent. One kilogramme of methane is equivalent to 21kgs of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The use of these two important components of a plantation can lead to massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.

SDP has taken steps to reduce and avoid emissions and sequestration through entrapment: trapping methane, cleaning it and feeding it through a gas engine to produce energy. These gas engines are giants; one 60 tonne palm oil mill can produce 1.2 megawatts of electricity. The electricity produced by the gas engines is fed into the grid, allowing SDP to recover some costs while ensuring little emissions and providing renewable energy to the nation.

Another step is avoidance, where the very production of methane is avoided by taking the raw effluent, mixing it with empty fruit bunches and using it as compost or organic fertiliser. This not only reduces emissions, it vastly reduces the use of nitrous oxide as well.

With these measures, SDP is hoping to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent. This calculation does not include the organic fertiliser as replacement for the nitrogen-based fertiliser.

SDP has already contracted out 22 of its palm oil mills to companies to carry out composting, fitted out one mill to run on biogas, and has signed a memorandum of understanding with Tenaga Nasional Bhd, Mitsui & Co Ltd, and three other independent suppliers to fit out more mills in the same way. The target is to reduce the emissions from all its palm oil mills through avoidance or entrapment by the financial year 2015/2016.

As an alternative to pesticides, SDP has introduced biological controls in the form of beneficial crops and predators. An example is barn owls, which are used to control rats. Rats are a major pest in palm oil plantations, capable of destroying up to one third of the crop. There is one barn owl for every eight hectares of plantation. This integrated pest management programme has reduced the use of chemicals that may adversely impact soil and water in the estates.

Taking measure

The aspect of sustainability that is people used to refer to the welfare of employees. Now it means the community - those that are directly impacted - and society at large, which are equally important to the company.

SDP has a dedicated team that handles suggestions and grievances of the company's small holders and people that work on the estates. The meetings are minuted, and if the issues are within SDP's control to address, they are dealt with.

The company's other initiatives in the community, like River of Life, try to educate people on long-term measures of sustainability. Rivers run through many of SDP's estates, and the company has taken the responsibility of improving their own practices in eliminating chemical run-off into the rivers. Through the River of Life programme SDP educates the people living downstream about measures to take to ensure the river stays clean, about how to plant trees to prevent erosion on the banks and so on.

SDP has taken the stand that its responsibilities do not necessarily end at the borders of its estates. An example is its project with the Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) in the Belum-Temenggor forest in Perak to rehabilitate the population of plain-pouched hornbills. SDP is collaborating with MNS to carry out research and educational programmes with the locals in the hope of encouraging an increase in their population.

Another example is its reforestation project `Rehabilitation of the Ulu Segama-Malua Forest Reserve' in Ulu Segama, Sabah, downriver of which is the Danum Valley, renowned for its virgin rainforest and orang utan population. The company decided to stay the expansion of its plantation and replant the forest so that this area is not put under strain and remains protected.

"It's a 10-year project costing us about RM25 million to replant all kinds of indigenous species of forest trees, with the end in mind of rehabilitating the orang utan population in the area," reveals Mahdhar. "This project shows how serious we are about sustainability; a plantation company replanting rare, endangered and threatened forest tree species instead of blindly expanding."

Want versus need

This, in a nutshell, is SDP's attitude. The company could very easily have decided to concentrate on profits and expansion and chew up everything in its path; it certainly is big enough to go its own way. But ultimately, it is something SDP wants to do.

The company's tagline says it all: developing sustainable futures. This was conceptualised more than 100 years ago, so it is the way of life for the Sime Darby Group and all its subsidiaries.

"Being big we have a responsibility to do this," says Mahdhar. "It is not an easy thing to do, but it's the right thing to do. Every activity we carry out anywhere has a consequence on the future, and we cannot put on blinkers and say that we don't care about the consequences. If we are not sensitive to our actions, or concerned of the consequences, then it is us who will have to tell our children that we were responsible for the planet's destruction. Instead we can now say we played our part positively.

"We have a choice of paths. As a leader in this sector, if we don't do it right, who else will?"

Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) - Towards a Green, Sustainable Environment


HISTORICALLY, the development of sewerage services in Malaysia was mainly driven by local authorities to meet the basic sanitation needs of the public.

With the federalisation of sewerage services in 1994, Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) together with the governing agencies had overseen the realization of modern and efficient sewerage treatment system in Malaysia for the past 16 years.

With almost 100 per cent sanitation coverage nationwide to date, Malaysia is considered by our regional counterparts as a success model.

Modern mechanised treatment technologies predominates most of our urban landscape, which ensures that sewage is treated before the effluent is released back into our receiving water bodies.

These systems not only safeguard public health but also provide a green and healthy environment. The modern systems we enjoy today have evolved through scientific research and technological development.

The continual improvement and modernisation of municipal sanitation services have led to the present day sewerage network and mechanised as well as automated treatment systems.

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