Tarek (left) and Dzaeman are both inaugural winners of the Maxis Awards and their respective projects focus heavily on sustainability. – Image by Khairul Imran, courtesy of GenerationT/Tatler Malaysia
Innovative local companies promote sustainability using digital technologies
DOING well and doing good are inexplicably intertwined, and successful business strategies include both.
Two inaugural winners of the Maxis Awards 2021 are Project ERTH (Electronic Recycling Through Heroes) and TRCRC (Tropical Rainforest Conservation and Research Centre)’s Project Benih.
Project ERTH is the first on-demand recycling service in the Asean region. It utilises a network of freelancers to collect old, used or unwanted electronics directly from Malaysian homes and businesses.
TRCRC was established to preserve tropical rainforest plant species and lead landscape-wide protection and reforestation projects throughout the country.
Maxis acts as a catalyst for these types of innovative and novel businesses by providing enterprise guidance and support from its technical experts as well as solutions such as ecommerce, IoT, cloud, voice, and network connectivity.
For Maxis, enabling and empowering homegrown businesses with digital technology will help the latter make a positive impact in their communities.
Through Maxis Awards, the converged solutions provider is committing RM5mil to help develop and promote at least a dozen homegrown business projects that can socially impact local communities.
Saving planet ‘ERTH’
‘The more recyclers we have, the more convenient it is for everyone to recycle – with the added bonus of a cash reward for them too,’ said Tarek. – Image by Khairul Imran, courtesy of GenerationT/Tatler Malaysia
Project ERTH founder and managing director Mohamed Tarek El-Fatatry had his epiphany when he encountered a shopkeeper discarding a caseload of old Nokia phones at a mall in Kuala Lumpur.
Born in the United Arab Emirates to Egyptian parents before moving to Finland, Tarek found that there was no proper electronics recycling infrastructure in place when he arrived in Malaysia five years ago.
“In Finland, whenever you go to a retailer to get a new device like a Nokia, the retailers will take in your old device and in exchange, you get some cash – that service is not so common in Malaysia.
“I found a processing plant that did recycle e-waste but in that search, I noticed that there was a missing link between the consumer and the recycling plant,” said Tarek.
So he started ERTH alongside his wife to fill that role – to save the environment and give consumers a convenient service to dispose of their e-waste.
There is an over-reliance on dumps and landfills.
“While e-waste only makes up 3% of household waste, it contributes to 70% of toxic heavy metals contamination in the environment and has similar effects on our quality of life – much like plastics,” said Tarek, adding that landfills are an inefficient way to handle waste with limited land area being a concern due to rising sea levels.
Now having won the Maxis Awards, Tarek looks to improve his waste-collecting operations by monitoring his network of gig workers in real-time.
“The Maxis grant will partially subsidise the cash we pay out to our users, and some of it will go into marketing.
“Maxis is also helping us develop an automatic dispatch and tracking system via mWorkforce. It’s an app on the driver’s phone that allows for real-time tracking.”
Together with Maxis Business solutions and its team of experts, Project ERTH hopes to maximise their value to the community by making e-waste recycling easy, convenient and rewarding.
Planting the seeds of sustainability
Dzaeman’s involvement in TRCRC started from the development stages of the organisation when the need to form a national seed bank was first tabled. – Image by Khairul Imran, courtesy of GenerationT/Tatler Malaysia
Sustainable businesses have the competitive advantage by attracting the best talent from the relevant industries.
One of these talents is ecologist Dr Dzaeman Dzulkifli.
As TRCRC’s managing director, Dzaeman is looking to address biodiversity loss in Malaysia by preserving endangered endemic tree and plant species.
From connecting trees and forests to safeguarding endangered species, TRCRC’s Project Benih serves two important national conservation policies:
1. Ex-situ conservation for the preservation of plant species and genetic diversity under the National Biodiversity plan.
2. Heart of Borneo and Central Forest Spine initiatives to support Malaysia’s commitments towards conservation.
“We work with different state governments to develop living collections and conservation actions plans that are suited to specific states’ biodiversity needs,” said Dzaeman.
As a Maxis Awards winner, TRCRC will be able to leverage Maxis' ecommerce and retail solutions to create an online marketplace for the public to pledge and adopt a tree to support TRCRC in a sustainable way.
“Using digital technologies will help us with our daily operations. Having to allocate manual resources to collect data and reports right now is time consuming and prone to human error,” he said.
“Having a digital solution like an app can help us streamline our operations when it comes to data collection, nursery stocks and information.
“From tracking our seedlings all the way to the consumer who wants to adopt a tree, this app will make the whole process seamless for our large-scale projects.”
As an ecologist, Dzaeman realises the importance of reaching a wider audience to spread the message on protecting and restoring our rainforests.
He said that Maxis would be able to provide this reach through its database and marketing solutions.
“We’re trying to reach a bigger audience because we’ve mostly been talking to larger organisations to get them on board.
“But we want to get the public involved in our conservation efforts too,” he noted.
Read more about the Maxis Awards and how it aims to empower Malaysians here.
