Monday March 24, 2008
Hands-on eco-envoy
By MICHAEL CHEANG
Maya Karin is serious about raising environmental awareness among the masses.
HER car trunk is full of recyclable garbage, she grows her own organic tomatoes, her home is lit by energy-saving light bulbs, and she even has a house in the middle of the jungle (well, sort of).
It looks like Maya Karin is serious about doing her bit for the environment.
When the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry recently appointed the popular artiste an “environmental envoy” to promote awareness on the environment in conjunction with International Coral Reef Year 2008, the news was greeted with more than a pinch of scepticism. After all, what would a model, actress and celebrity know about environmental conservation?
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Actress Maya Karin showing off the solar water heater on the rooftop of her home in Sungai Penchala, Petaling Jaya, Selangor. |
To assess just how “green” she is, we visited her family home in Sungai Penchala in Petaling Jaya, and found that the award-winning actress of movies such as Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam and the recent Duyung does her best to be as eco-friendly as possible.
Admittedly, the “assessment” did not start off too well when Maya showed up in a petrol-guzzling luxury car, which she readily admits is not a good thing. “Yes, I know it’s not environmentally-friendly to drive this car. If there were any nice hybrid cars in Malaysia, I’d drive that instead,” she says. “Well, at least I don’t waste water washing my car every day and insist that it is shiny at all times. If I have to arrive at a premiere in a muddy car, so be it!”
Maya’s realistic “doing what I can” stance is her redeeming factor. “We have to be realistic about things. I may be an environmental envoy, but you can’t expect me to walk everywhere or not fly just to prove that I am 100% green,” she explains. “What I want to do is prove that we can live the modern life and still care for the environment at the same time.
“My strongest role (as an envoy) is to create awareness. I’m neither an expert nor a scientist, but my face and name is well known enough, so maybe I can get the message across better that way. My role is to be a communicator and to get the word out about the environmental issues we face.”
Growing up green
Maya’s love for nature was cultivated from a young age. Her father was a geologist and town planner in environmentally conscious Germany (where she was born), and he had a big influence on her and her two siblings in terms of taking care of nature and the environment.
“We grew up with great respect for nature. My father was very environmentally conscious, and he made sure we were involved from a young age. On weekends, my father would never take us to the malls. Instead we would go to some hill in the countryside where he taught us about the different trees and plants and so on,” she recalls.
“I also love getting down and dirty with nature. I’m not afraid of muck. I grew up climbing trees and jumping into dirty longkangs, playing football in the rain and mud. I’m happy to dig into the dirt in my garden, with my hands. I have a little tomato patch at home where we grow tomatoes organically. I plan to have a little vegetable patch where we can grow our own organic vegetables.”
Maya believes it is everyone’s responsibility to do what we can for the environment. She makes a conscious effort to cut down on the use of plastic bags. “If I have a small item, I always tell the cashier not to put it in the bag. And they would give me a surprised look!” she says. “I also refrain from buying mineral water or snacks in disposable wrapping as much as I can. If you’re thirsty, but are going to be home soon, why not hold on a little longer and wait till you get home and have a nice glass of water?”
Recycling frustrations
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Maya Karin uses mostly energy-saving light bulbs at home. |
Recycling is another issue that Maya is very vocal about, and understandably so. Her car trunk is constantly filled with recyclables that she has collected but has nowhere to bring them to.
“What happens is this: I collect the recyclable waste in my home and after a few weeks it starts piling up, so I put it in my car to send for recycling. So there I am driving around town in my car with a load of rubbish in my trunk, and nowhere to take it to.
“I end up spending more fuel driving around looking for a place to recycle the stuff. So what I do is, I’ll drive into an apartment complex and dump the recyclables in their recycling bins.”
She reckons that while it’s nice for some shopping complexes to have little bins for people to deposit their recyclable waste, the main focus of a recycling programme should be on household waste, because that’s where the bulk of the garbage comes from. Sadly, such facilities are woefully few and far between in Malaysia.
“I want to recycle so badly but the facilities are virtually non-existent! I’ve done some research looking for recycling plants, and find that there are very few around,” she says. “This is so different from Germany, where recycling is the norm, and people are shocked when you tell them you don’t recycle. Here, people give you a nice pat on the back for recycling and tell you, ‘Good job!’”
Eco-friendly film shoots
Warming up to the subject, Maya hits out at people’s lax attitude towards disposable water bottles. “People are so careless with water bottles these days. At every function, water is served in bottles. Why can’t we go back to using glasses? We can save so much by doing simple things like that!
“Once, during a film shoot, a crew member threw a bottle into the bushes, so I screamed and went to pick it up,” she recalls. “And then they screamed because they were shocked at an actress going into the shrubs to pick up rubbish!”
She also recalls another time when they were filming at a beautiful location, but when she returned to the location she was shocked to find that it was strewn with garbage left behind by the film crew.
“Rubbish was everywhere! I immediately called the producers and they sent people there to collect the rubbish which the crew left behind.”
This begs the question: With her star status, surely she can request for more environmentally friendly productions?
“I have talked to producers and asked them to make an effort to do certain things, such as not using disposable packages for food. And I have managed to convince them to do so on several occasions,” she adds.
The production of her latest movie Duyung (in which she plays a mermaid) was more eco-friendly than her previous movies. There were fewer water bottles, non-disposable cutlery was used, and the crew cut down on transportation costs by staying at the filming site. All this augured well for the environmentally friendly message of the movie.
Maya is glad that the movie is spreading environmental awareness among the masses, citing feedback she received from parents of children who watched the movie.
“Some of the parents told me that after watching the movie, their kids wanted to go to the seaside and pick up garbage! Well, the girls wanted to be mermaids, while the boys wanted to go and pick up garbage.”
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