Sago chair by Wan Khamsiah Wan Ali

Design, then, is the most effective element towards saving the environment. Take another example, a well designed piece of furniture. It should be durable enough to withstand long years of repeated use, since there must be thousands of badly made chairs discarded everyday. At the same time, a good chair should be affordable enough for the masses.

Wan Khamsiah Wan Ali, 23, believes she has a solution to meet both. “Twelve tonnes of sago waste is discarded daily in Sarawak,” Khamsiah told StarMetro recently.

“Most of the waste ends up buried or thrown into rivers. But waste is only waste if can’t find another use for it.”

Her solution is ingenious.



While preparing for her final year project during her Industrial Design Bachelor’s Degree at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas), she figured why not compact sago waste, forming plywood like building materials.

This process is not new, but Khamsiah’s usage of sago waste is.

Since the 1980s, medium-density fibreboards (MDF) has been one of the major manufacturing materials, used from making speaker cabinets to ceiling boards.

The engineering is pretty simple. Breakdown any soft or medium density wood, combine it with wax, to form panels by applying high pressure.

MDF, although not aesthetically pleasing, can be laminated with a layer of high quality wood.

For Khamsiah’s sago MDF, she has found a ratio of one part sago waste to three parts polystyrene works best. It allows the composite material to be light but tough.

With the material in hand, the Unimas undergraduate fashioned a chair. “It’s a modular design,” she said, sitting on one.

“My design allows the chair to be used for one person, or it can unfold to sit two. In the unfolded position, the top is concave for better ergonomics, but for older people, who may find it harder to sit down and stand up, the chair can be turned upside down. This increases the sitting height.”



Khamsiah’s creativity is an advantage of youth, the period where new ideas come easily, when experimentation is not bounded by cynicism or by notions of being overly “practical” or “realistic”.

What Khamsiah’s ingenuity also proves is the importance of knowledge. Her awareness of environmental issues, coupled with her keen eye for a good statistic – the amount of sago waste produced everyday – allowed her to integrate ideas, producing something new and original.