A Seed of Hope
Amid the fourth industrial revolution where the road of humanity is polluted by humans’ dirty hands, a seed of hope emerges to vanquish the ever-populating waste materials covering up a huge part of this Earth.
With a mission of championing sustainability through the cleaner environment by merging science, art, and creativity together, Biji-Biji Initiative is now growing stronger than ever in redefining sustainable living, not just to the public, but to the whole world.
Our team is very fortunate to be able to have an exclusive face-to-face interview session with Mr. Jey Bala, the Head of Business Development and Programs from Biji-Biji Initiative who is in charge of the clients, events, and education there.
Let’s get to know this eco-friendly social enterprise better, shall we?
1.Can you tell us a little bit about Biji-Biji Initiative background?
Today, right now we are in MEREKA Makerspace (where the interview was held). MEREKA just started about two years ago whereas Biji-Biji has been running for about 5 years.
Where It All Started
We started off doing fashion and business. Meaning the first project or grant that we got, we actually did a project using banners to make bags. There was also one project to build bookshelves using the wood, the ones that they lay electric lines and you see the big round wood cylinders and made it into bookshelves.
So we started out doing that, and soon after, we realised that it is something we like to venture into, deeper. Art installation is nice, especially when there’s electronic in it. So, that’s how we developed the electronic steel.
Workshop and Education
During that time, we also wanted to do a workshop because when you teach a specific thing, you get to tag in line with events which somehow require some insulation and like what I mentioned, workshops, thus, we slowly grew from that.
We realised that education was something so significant and we need to push it further, thus, came the idea of Me.reka.
We used to call the space an open bookshop to welcome people to our place anytime they feel like wanting to make anything. They only need to tell us, draw it out and we will tell them what to do, so they can work together with us to make it happen. Let’s say if they want to make a cupboard or a table, they would use that space back then.
However, we found out that there was not so much educational value that we could push from there though we did one or two projects like campaign and book developing as well as making designs with students and all.
Now that we have the Me.reka space movement going around, we think that it is the perfect time for us to enhance the educational value we’ve been talking about. All the educational-based projects would be put under Me.reka while our fashions and electronics would be under Biji-Biji Initiative respectively.
Waste and Its Value
We also try to champion sustainability by giving a talk on waste and show people what they can do with these materials because waste is not just waste, it is a commodity. It can even be your resources. A lot of people will say “ahh…it’s just a waste” but for us, “hey, we can make something out of it.”
2. Is there any story behind the name Biji-Biji?
We wanted to stick true to Malaysia, so it has to be a Malaysian name. We were trying to find something that is connected to everybody and we thought like yeah ‘seeds!’ Because it’s the seed that you sow that bring up the future. So we start from the ‘biji’, from the seed itself, and that’s how we came up with that name.
3. If people were to ask you what is Biji-Biji, how would you define it in your own words?
It’s a social enterprise championing sustainability where we are trying to tell people to advocate for us. It’s also more like a community of people who want to do some better changes to the world.
MDGs and SDGs
There are a lot of things for us to learn, definitely. Sometimes, we get donations of not-so-good materials and we will utilise them to the fullest as we do not want the materials to go to waste. We even try to tell people to say no to plastic since day one.
Apart from that, we were also learning together in such an encouraging environment where the people involved were trying new things under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
NGO vs. Social Enterprise
NGOs mainly work for donors and they will try to help you reach that goal. Most people cannot be paid well in NGOs. Normally they will be able to pay a few people but not the rest of the volunteers because their business model is not sustainable in a sense.
In social enterprise, like us, however, you can actually be thinking of yourself as a business entrepreneur or even a business owner and develop your own team while everybody is equally treated and equally maintained by making sure that we follow the SDGs since a long time ago.
This includes securing enough positions for women at work as well as ensuring the workers to be paid from the lowest percentage to the highest percentage and the list goes on.
Thus, the SDGs are very good because people are now becoming more aware of the fact that everybody is doing it, making them want to follow suit. Besides, there is also a benchmark to it where reports should be provided.
It’s good as it makes everybody to somehow keep themselves in check and balances. So, I guess social enterprises are doing things correctly as of now.
The Corporate World
The corporates are mostly less aware when it comes to these kinds of things but it’s good that they are now trying to slowly understand and see certain things. And the more we shout, the more people are realising it and we’re getting more clients who want to learn about SDGs and how to do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme.
#Trying to Change Their Mindset
Most of the time when I ask them what is CSR programme, they’d say beach cleanup, zoo cleaning, going to old folks home, just some basic answers while I’m expecting more from them.
So, we would teach them what are the other projects out there, the ones that people are doing. Therefore, when they already reached day 2 or 3 of our programmes, they will give different answers than the ones they gave on day 1.
Some matured answers show that they understand the concept better. Let’s say if I ask them what will be your site projects? They would come up with a plan of developing a system where they are going to implement such and such and measure all these things. Now, you can see the difference from before.
#Go Green & Go The Extra Miles
Collecting all these wastes is nice but imagine the collected wastes could build something like a culture which could actually save X amount of sea lives, and this would inspire a lot of people. We don’t want to just ‘go green’ and leave like there’s no value in it.
So, we are trying to put those kinds of impacts though it will cost a lot of money. We want them to take, measure and teach them that they can make their own things and be their own leaders.
Well, whatever it is, it will always come down to budgets and projects.
Fashion Industry
Same goes to the fashion industry. For your information, fashion is the second worst industry in the world. Meaning that if the clothes that we are buying are too cheap, the workers usually are not getting well-paid. Such an environment is harmful.
Let’s say if it’s made in Southeast Asia and being flown out to other countries, it’s really bad. However, if you buy local market stuff, you are actually helping a local person by paying for their time and ideas.
We also hear many people talking about the smart solution which is not smart at all. There is this thing called microfibres that help to grind plastic to make clothes and said to be able to resolve the plastic issue.
However, what they didn’t realise is that every time you wash the plastic, it goes to the ocean. It cannot be filtered, thus goes straight into the fish and we end up eating those fish.
So, if we go to some places, they have eco-friendly microfibre plastic cloth but it’s actually terrible. Malaysia, in some sense, we do a lot of mistakes. Sometimes, we like to brand ourselves ‘the first in Malaysia’ or even in Southeast Asia, but who are validating it and checking the fact, no one knows.
4. So do you have any specific target market?
To be honest, we don’t mind anybody. When we do programmes, we target low income marginalised community because the programme is such.
Sometimes if we are doing our Biji-Biji work, such as the art installation, then there are a lot of events, event companies as well as campaigns that we want to partner with.
So, let’s say if somebody is doing a run, somebody is doing any events, we would like to partner with them because we believe we’re quite creative. Therefore, we want to brainstorm with them and let them know what we can do for them as our builds can be customised according to how they want it to be.
5. How do you promote your products?
Luckily, we have got a steady flow of our previous clients coming back to us and also some words of mouth, somebody is going to that event and within that week we get some calls from people who visited the event itself.
My old communication team and I realise that we do not do enough commercials and the fact that we need to push the promotion because all your content and stuff should be showcased.
Thus, we opt for social media communication as it is the cheapest. We also do boost and stuff like that whenever we run our own events. So, it can be said, most of our promotions are through online platforms.
6. What makes Biji-Biji Initiative significant to its customers?
I guess because we do a lot of eco-projects. A lot of time, when it comes to World Environment Day, Earth Hour, that’s when they’re typing DIY projects into the search engine and whatever they type, we will come out on the list, and that’s how they get in touch with us.
Low Price to Free of Charge
In order to get them to buy our products, we would make them look very presentable and affordable at the same time. Thus, for our customers, especially those who are in the B2C category, it’s either we do not charge them at all or we charge them with prices as low as RM10 or RM20.
Open Book Policy
Whereas our clients, they can pay because they usually have the budget. Our policy of finance is an open book policy so that’s why if we like to make a table we’ll tell you it will take two days, our master builder is this much, the material is this much, and we put a 30% profit on top of it. So that’s how our financing works.
Talking about customers, business-wise, we usually get property developers, shopping malls, financial institutions as well as small and random businesses.
7. As for your product, are you working on it based on request or how?
Some of them are based on requests, while some others, we believe this is the best, thus we make them and put them in the catalogues so that people can rent them out.
For instance, our furniture which is made out of diesel drums. The ready-mades are usually being rented out to our customers as they prefer to rent due to the cheaper price that they will get.
Another example is our bicycle juices which we rented a lot. People will cycle and blend the juice. It can be a game to be played by two people cycling as we can see who does the juice the fastest. We can customise here and there and it depends on what the customers want.
8. Are there any collaborations that you guys did with other people or planning to do in the future?
Well, we have a lot on our plates. We have EpicHome, Build for Tomorrow and some other event companies.
As for the future ones, we have Milo and an insurance company which wants us to do a roadshow with them. We are also working with some artists.
So, we are currently working with a guy who does fashion, he is on the clothing line so we are working with him to design some clothes. Usually, we would make bags but this time we want to do clothes as well, using some kimonos.
Apart from him, we also work with individuals, corporates and other social enterprises.
9. Are there any other services that you guys do?
We have quite a lot of services here. We have wood and metal projects as well as designs. If you are a maker, you might have your own products, but if you don’t know how to make it look nicer, you can come and see us.
Perhaps we can help with laser engraving or add some stuff to it. We have electronic labs, fashion is also possible and not-to-forget, arts and crafts, though we don’t have a lab for it, it still can be done through our workshops. We also have VR & ER stations and now, a space for cooking.
10. Future plans that you guys want to add?
Chemist and Bio Lab
For future plans, we were talking about bio lab to do biomimicry and we have a lot of people talking about it. We are quite interested in that. Chemist and bio lab would be cool to have but we’ll see how it goes.
More Collaborations & Hands-On Experiences
We are trying to partner with other colleges and schools to see how we can do different things with them because they have the talent.
We realise that they are still stuck at academy level and the teachers are not very helpful in breaking that. We want them to get real hands-on experience as most of them are very theoretical based. Meaning they don’t really understand the nature of being independent.
11. Feedback from customers on your products?
So, far they love our workshops. Sometimes we do get feedback such as “this one could’ve been safer,” and “this one is a bit noisy” because the installation using waste materials is quite hard. However, it is undeniable that we learnt a lot.
We are also proud of certain of our installations since we are the only one in Malaysia to use ultracapacitors for high-tech stuff. For instance, if I were to cycle and it just blends, people will think it’s the work of dynamo when we are actually using different technology because we want to harness more energy from it.
12. What was the biggest challenge faced by Biii-Biji Initiative since it was first established?
Getting sales and getting buy-ins. The main thing is getting buy-ins from big companies. It is quite tough because sometimes, big companies had changes in their management. Perhaps they might have fired their old manager and filled the position with a new one.
Due to aforementioned situation, all your plans there, when you thought it might be making a big-money, suddenly gone just like that.
Therefore, we really need to buckle up and get other projects to get a steady flow and be more sustainable and we want to grow the team a bit. However, I guess it depends on the jobs and economy at the same time.
13. Advice for young entrepreneurs?
Get Yourself A Mentor
Don’t give up and find some mentors. They are very important and helpful. MaGIC is good. We’ve been working with MaGIC before they even started, I think one or two of our members here are our mentors from MaGIC.
Especially when you are a social enterprise, you feel like you don’t know what to do, you’re lost and you’re stuck. Even if you’re selling burgers, it’s quite scary because you don’t know how to blend properly and stuff. When you do something, do it well.
So, it’s always good to learn from people. There are experts out there. Get a mentor, get some help, get a grant because it helps a lot though it involves a lot of applications and time.
You might spend writing 3 grants and only get 1. But it’s better than the competition.
So, you need to have guidelines for your startup business as they will make sure that you are not falling out of line in your time frame that you are supposed to deliver. Looking for money is one of the main things most startups fail because they cannot sustain themselves.
Therefore, I guess finding out your business strength and working with a mentor really helps.
14. What do you want people to know about Biji-Biji Initiative?
Current Location and Boards Distinction
We are now based in Publika shopping mall and currently having two businesses namely Me.reka and Biji-Biji. So, to distinguish the boards again, Me.reka would cater the educational part, whereas Biji-Biji would handle the arts and installations work.
Free Memberships
We have free memberships which mean on the 3rd Friday of the month you can show us your skills and if we are okay with it, you can use our space for free. We’re not a co-working space, but more of a maker’s space.
So, if you are a fashion maker and you can show us how you use a sewing machine and other skills on that day, and we say okay, you can sign up the form anytime you want to use our space. But make sure you call us a week or two before so we can arrange it properly.
Recycle
Lastly, I want all people to recycle, please. Start being more watchful about how we do things. There’s a lot of new jobs out there and they are changing. There will be no more sells and people in the long run because it’s all going to be AR and VR kind of stuff.
So, find out what is interesting and what you like to discover. I would encourage people to venture into social enterprise, even as an intern as you can learn more than just making a coffee, photocopy and sitting down in meetings.
More Info
Do make your way to Biji-Biji Initiative official website to know more about them and drop by their Facebook and Instagram pages for the latest updates from them!
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