Green Routine

The construction industry is often criticised for neglecting environmental issues in favour of profit.

While the industry as a whole is actively pursuing the building of green building projects, the flip side is that not all companies who are accredited to Green Building Council membership nor all LEED-accredited professionals follow or encourage others to follow eco-friendly practices in their day-to-day tasks.

If we do not collectively change our thinking and how we operate, critics of the sector’s overall environmental performance may be proved right.

With World Expo 2020 and the FIFA 2022 World Cup on the horizon, and as the GCC construction industry prepares for another construction extravaganza, there could not be a better time for all stakeholders to start seriously practicing sustainability in everything that they do.

One such issue is heavy usage of paper in the construction industry.

It’s a fact that tonnes of paper and several thousands of printer cartridges  are being used by all stakeholders for communicating by means of circulating  multiple hard copies of drawings, reports, submittals, schedules, manuals,  purchase orders, invoices, delivery notes, timesheets, letters and faxes, without realising the adverse effect we leave on the environment.

Due to this uncontrolled use of paper, paper mills produce tonnes of extra supplies. However, such paper production and usage takes a toll on the beautiful planet we live in.

Paper is the third-largest industrial polluter of air, water and land, releasing well over 100m kg of toxic pollutants each year.

The worldwide pulp and paper industry is the fifth-largest consumer of electrical energy.

The paper industry also consumes more water in production per ton of product than any other industry. In addition, the carbon dioxide emitted during paper production is a greenhouse gas responsible for acid rain.

And wastewater from paper mills contains solids that affect ecological characteristics and results in the death of several living organisms in water.

Discarded paper is another significant issue. Even in recycling processes, sludge produced during de-inking is a major source of pollution.

We in the construction industry have a collective responsibility and should set an example for other industries to follow. This includes reducing or eliminating paper usage by going digital by means of electronic transmittal, communication, storage and data management.

Such an approach gives better control over projects and identifies potential issues early as electronic documents allow a company to capture cost and information on a real-time basis.

Also, it is a more secure way of doing business against loss of information and other fire-associated risks. Staffing and overheads also reduce considerably and the speed and efficiency of communications, document filing and retrieval all increase.

By digitising paper-based documents, the industry will gain from a multitude of benefits that not only help to create a better planet to live in but also increase our efficiency and create a healthier bottom line for business.

Reference:

http://www.constructionweekonline.com/

by CW Guest Columnist on Jan 5, 2014

Qatar has highest density of millionaires

SOURCE: Trade Arabia News Service (http://www.linkedin.com/)

 

Qatar has the highest concentration of millionaires in the world with 143 out of every 1,000 households having private wealth of at least $1 million, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group.

 

The country is followed by Switzerland (116), Kuwait (115), Hong Kong (94), and Singapore (82). 

 

The US had the largest number of billionaires in 2012, but the highest density of billionaire households was in Hong Kong (15.1 per million), followed by Switzerland (9.4 per million), said the BCG’s annual report on the global wealth-management industry.

 

According to the report, global private financial wealth grew by 7.8 percent in 2012 to a total of $135.5 trillion. The rise was stronger than in either 2011 or 2010, when global wealth grew by 3.6 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively.

 

Wealth increased measurably in the old-world regions of North America (7.8 percent), Western Europe (5.2 percent), and Japan (2.4 percent), mainly owing to the sharp rebound in equity markets in most countries, particularly in the second half of the year. 

Meanwhile, new wealth creation fuelled stronger, double-digit growth in the new-world regions of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan (13.8 percent), Eastern Europe (13.2 percent), and Latin America (10.5 percent). 

 

Wealth in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) saw near-double-digit growth (9.1 percent). New-world regions will account for nearly 70 percent of the growth in global private wealth over the next five years.

 

The total number of millionaire households reached 13.8 million globally in 2012, or 0.9 percent of all households. The US had the largest number of millionaire households (5.9 million), followed by Japan (1.5 million) and China (1.3 million). China should surpass Japan in 2013.

 

Offshore wealth, defined as assets booked in a country where the investor has no legal residence or tax domicile, rose by 6.1 percent in 2012 to $8.5 trillion. Despite this increase, stronger growth in onshore wealth led to a slight decline—to 6.3 percent from 6.4 percent, compared with 2011—in offshore wealth’s share of global private wealth. While offshore wealth is projected to rise modestly over the next five years, reaching $11.2 trillion by the end of 2017, wealth is increasingly moving onshore due to the intense pressure that tax authorities are exerting on offshore centres, it said.