Building & Investment (Mar - Apr 2016) (Mar - Apr 2016) | Page 21

Special Feature “... positive eco- living is a lifestyle that benefits all, how its impact can be quantified and, more importantly, how it can be lived day-today. This is the vision we want to share with fellow Malaysians.” Hybrid Eco Solar Water Heater with PecoL® Hyrbid Eco Hot Water Storage. B&I: P E C O L i s m a r k e t e d a s “Innovations in Green Energy.” What are some of the innovations that feature in your products? EASB:  Innovation is about change, from the norm to something better, say, an additional function, for example. Take our hybrid tank, which is not an electrical product but a storage tank, then, observe how an air conditioner system works – it cools the interior space and expels hot air within into the ambient air or atmosphere as ‘waste’. By installing two additional valves to the air conditioner system, we can harness this waste energy and transform it to functional energy by diverting it to our hybrid tank, where the piping acts as a heat exchanger and transfers heat (from the air conditioner’s outdoor compressor) to what’s in the tank and generate hot water. This is our PECOL® Air-con Water Heater, the world’s first waste heat reclamation heater for heating up water using heat generated by either a single or several split air conditioners. We have a few R&D projects in the pipeline, e.g., the 4-in-1 refrigerant system to be announced in four to five months, so too premature to say more at this time. Other than that, we are continually upgrading and enhancing our line of products in every aspect, i.e., the system itself, valves, switches, materials and so on and re-designing our heat pumps to achieve more than 75% savings in electricity. B&I:  To promote a greener lifestyle among Malaysians, PECOL launched a nationwide “Positive Eco-Liv ing” campaign at IGEM 2015. How is it faring? EASB:  The Campaign is aimed at drawing Eco Mini Heat Pump. awareness to our existing lifestyle and its adverse impact on the environment which we are, in fact, borrowing from our future generations. First, we need to stop the damage being done, which right now is going very badly, and then look at recovery. However, the whole idea of stopping is so far away, it has become an impossible dream so reducing the damage is the only reality. Small though it may be our contribution is to engage individuals, communities and corporations to join us and form an umbrella of energy conservationists and savers. Anchored by commercial institutions, such as hotels, at the forefront, we plan to organise a programme where 30-40 participating families, as teams, are invited to a home environment where the lifestyle is basic, i.e., without technology, as in the past. Without compromising their conveniences, our agenda is to show them how we can adopt an eco-lifestyle, living in community and consciously caring for the environment and use of energy. This will be the blueprint, an example that the community worldwide can follow. The question we would pose after the experience is ‘do you want to be part of positive eco-living?’ This issue have been around for a long time but have gone stagnant for a number of reasons, e.g., no continuity, no effort to qualify and quantify findings or effects, lack of facilities and so on. Anyway, to our surprise, a lot of corporations (e.g., Yayasan Hijau, MyHijau) and individuals have placed real interest in our campaign. Given a chance, we want to take it global, the understanding that lifestyles, and adaptability to change, vary from country to country. B&I:  In your opinion, is enough being done in Malaysia about green technology by, say, the Government, the private sector and the public? EASB:  If enough has been done, we won’t be talking about this today. I would say a lot of effort is yet to be put in by everyone concerned, right from the individual to corporate and the Government. Everyone is involved in bringing this together, everyone is talking about it but not enough is being done. A platform has to be created to come together and this is what we are doing. We are too engrossed in our materialistic life so much so that we are only focused on making money to pay bills, bounded, as it were, by economic slavery. While the Government has launched initiatives and organised activities to promote environmental care, eco-living and all that, these were not scaled up or sustained over time. The thing is, in tackling these issues in the right way where everyone accepts it, we should address them ‘real life’, showing them how positive eco-living is a lifestyle that benefits all, how its impact can be quantified and, more importantly, how it can be lived day-to-day. This is the vision we want to share with fellow Malaysians. ■ More information at www.PecoL2u.com Building & Investment  | www.b-i.biz 17