Hello from the UAE

[belindab]

Hello - I am Belinda and I live in the land of the sustainability nightmare (United Arab Emirates)!
Just to bring you upto speed on the challenges we create/face -
Per capita - in the world....
We are the biggest generator of waste
3rd largest consumer of electricity
biggest consumer of water and bottled water
outside the US we are the largest market for Hummers (our population is small!)

The Government in Abu Dhabi are addressing things with new projects such as the Masdar initiative (renewable energy), clean diesel and I am reliably informed that many more sustainability projects will follow.

Meanwhile Dubai is busy creating islands in the Arabian Gulf, building the largest airport in the world and swallowing up the rest of the coastline and open space of this Emirate with construction projects resembling Gotham City.

Then there's the desalination water problem :(

SO! I will really enjoy learning about good (and bad practices) through this forum and hope that I will be able to make a difference in some way in future development of my country by raising awareness of the absolute essential need to adopt honest, realistic and ongoing sustainable practices.

I work in CSR and sustainability and am pleased to be a member and look forward to interacting with you.

[Corey]

thanks for joining. Wow what people will do when they have money to waste.......

seems your English is much better than mine as well
:peace:

:idea: Lets love thy neighbor and treat them as family we love............

Wow what an ignorant thought worth having though chat latter hope we don't get the wrong Idea being online where it is difficult to change thing when we need to be on the street to get people aware in large numbers.....

[FabianPattberg]

Welcome to the forum belindab.

[anoop.dxb]

Hello dear Sustainability lovers,

Nice to meet you all here...Let me first of all introduce myself. I'm a Mechanical Design Engineer pursuing a career in Sustainability and currently associated with an ESCO id dubai, engaging in Sustainable/Green building design.

Of course, there is a big room for improvement in the construction sector within Middle East reagrding the Energy efficiency, resource wastage and sustainability. As mentioned by Belindab, the per capita consumption of resources in UAE is far higher than average global per capita consumption.
We have been engaged in a lot of Energy/water conservation projects here in UAE and were literally stunned by seeing the bare truth of blind resource wastage that have been prevalent here for years.

Recently, the environmental/ energy efficiency awareness among the people has increased tremendously and a lot of talks and seminars on Environment and Energy efficiency is being held all over the UAE. Sustainability and Green are the buzzwords as everywhere else in the world. The govt. is also supporting a lot on environmental projects with strong financial fundings.

The contruction boom in UAE together with the call for sustainability and its combined effect is something the energy consciuos world is curiously looking at...!!!

Thanks & regards,
Anoop.

[Corey]

Originally Posted by anoop.dxb

Hello dear Sustainability lovers,

Nice to meet you all here...Let me first of all introduce myself. I'm a Mechanical Design Engineer pursuing a career in Sustainability and currently associated with an ESCO id dubai, engaging in Sustainable/Green building design.

Of course, there is a big room for improvement in the construction sector within Middle East reagrding the Energy efficiency, resource wastage and sustainability. As mentioned by Belindab, the per capita consumption of resources in UAE is far higher than average global per capita consumption.
We have been engaged in a lot of Energy/water conservation projects here in UAE and were literally stunned by seeing the bare truth of blind resource wastage that have been prevalent here for years.

Recently, the environmental/ energy efficiency awareness among the people has increased tremendously and a lot of talks and seminars on Environment and Energy efficiency is being held all over the UAE. Sustainability and Green are the buzzwords as everywhere else in the world. The govt. is also supporting a lot on environmental projects with strong financial fundings.

The contruction boom in UAE together with the call for sustainability and its combined effect is something the energy consciuos world is curiously looking at...!!!

Thanks & regards,
Anoop.

I am glad your apart of this I just want to let you know to keep an eye on the terms "DUST TO DUST" calculation and "Total cost" these two phrases are vital in determining whether a certain process or technology is truly sustainable or green. Also because it is such a boom area with potential to make huge amount of money some have twisted the meanings around or use the more obscure meanings if "green" or "sustainable"

Examples of a couple of phrase fix to help understand my point.

Organic No chemicals or GM
Environmentally organic. No chemicals, no Gm , No mono crop, farmed only in a fashion that does not impact the environment.

Sustainable = those that use this one focus mainly on money and personnel
environmentally sustainable. this one is obvious or should be.