MARKET DEVELOPMENT
Bio-Art Contest Launched
Bio-Art Contest Launched
21/04/2015 (Daily Express) - The first-ever Bio-Art competition in the State was launched on Monday in conjunction with the start of the two-day Bio Borneo 2015 conference and exhibition held at the Lahad Datu POIC.
The competition is jointly organised by the State-owned Palm Oil Industrial Cluster (POIC) Sabah Sdn Bhd in collaboration with the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation, Sabah Education Department and the Sabah State Library Lahad Datu Branch.
POIC Corporate Affairs Manager, Lynette Hoo, said 11 secondary schools and pre-schoolers will take part in two categories of the competition.
"Sabah is rich in biodiversity and there is a great need to promote awareness among the younger generations to optimise our natural resources, including turning waste to wealth, and in this case, waste to art," she said.
The objectives of the competition are, to promote appreciation for biodiversity among youths through art as a form of expression, encourage artistic talents and develop greater environmental awareness through the use of oil palm and related agriculture waste materials.
It also aims to promote innovation through art at an early age.
Participants can choose to draw or paint or make crafts and artwork with oil palm biomass.
Oil palm biomass – in the form of empty fruit bunches, mesocarp fibres, palm kernel shells, etc, are increasingly being seen as potentially more valuable than crude palm oil because of the wide array of high-value products that can be processed from them.
Sabah has more than 1.45 million hectares of oil palm plantation and 125 oil palm mills which produce more than 20 million tons of biomass per year – about 30 per cent of the national total.
The Federal government, through the National Biomass Strategy 2020, has identified Sabah as the hub for the development of biomass, which can be turned into second generation biofuel and a host of bio chemicals.
Malaysia is currently in the forefront of developing graphene from methane, a greenhouse gas produced in huge quantities in palm oil mill wastes (of POME).
Graphene, the inventors of which won the Nobel Prize about a decade ago, has been described as a 'miracle material' which has the potential of 'changing the face of manufacturing' because it is 'harder than diamond and thinner than a human hair'.
Malaysia's Felda Global Ventures recently acquired UK-based Cambridge Nanosystems Ltd which owns a patented process to produce graphene.
At a recent seminar in Kuala Lumpur hosted by the Malaysia Investment Development Authority on the carbon-based material, participants were asked to 'imagine a smart phone or a TV screen than can be bent, tyres that last but won't heat up and aircraft wings that can be de-iced at the press of a button'.
The competition is jointly organised by the State-owned Palm Oil Industrial Cluster (POIC) Sabah Sdn Bhd in collaboration with the Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation, Sabah Education Department and the Sabah State Library Lahad Datu Branch.
POIC Corporate Affairs Manager, Lynette Hoo, said 11 secondary schools and pre-schoolers will take part in two categories of the competition.
"Sabah is rich in biodiversity and there is a great need to promote awareness among the younger generations to optimise our natural resources, including turning waste to wealth, and in this case, waste to art," she said.
The objectives of the competition are, to promote appreciation for biodiversity among youths through art as a form of expression, encourage artistic talents and develop greater environmental awareness through the use of oil palm and related agriculture waste materials.
It also aims to promote innovation through art at an early age.
Participants can choose to draw or paint or make crafts and artwork with oil palm biomass.
Oil palm biomass – in the form of empty fruit bunches, mesocarp fibres, palm kernel shells, etc, are increasingly being seen as potentially more valuable than crude palm oil because of the wide array of high-value products that can be processed from them.
Sabah has more than 1.45 million hectares of oil palm plantation and 125 oil palm mills which produce more than 20 million tons of biomass per year – about 30 per cent of the national total.
The Federal government, through the National Biomass Strategy 2020, has identified Sabah as the hub for the development of biomass, which can be turned into second generation biofuel and a host of bio chemicals.
Malaysia is currently in the forefront of developing graphene from methane, a greenhouse gas produced in huge quantities in palm oil mill wastes (of POME).
Graphene, the inventors of which won the Nobel Prize about a decade ago, has been described as a 'miracle material' which has the potential of 'changing the face of manufacturing' because it is 'harder than diamond and thinner than a human hair'.
Malaysia's Felda Global Ventures recently acquired UK-based Cambridge Nanosystems Ltd which owns a patented process to produce graphene.
At a recent seminar in Kuala Lumpur hosted by the Malaysia Investment Development Authority on the carbon-based material, participants were asked to 'imagine a smart phone or a TV screen than can be bent, tyres that last but won't heat up and aircraft wings that can be de-iced at the press of a button'.