Climate change is global issues with significant economic, social and environmental implications. Climate change mitigation in Asia has large impacts on global CO 2 emission reduction. CO 2 emission is the largest source of greenhouse gas emission constitutes about 65 % of the total emission. Low-carbon Society initiative is one of the various mechanisms that have been deployed to achieve green economic growth, societal well-being and development, environmental preservation and management in a holistic manner. Energy efficiency improvement in Asia will be a key factor to tackle the climate change issues. Water and energy conservation, green transportation and low emission technology are the key aspects to catalyse the shift towards climate-resilient economic growth. The latest developments in these aspects are reviewed in this special volume to sustain the development of low-carbon emission in Asian countries. The use of holistic management system to integrate these key areas for long-term sustainability goal is also highlighted.

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Disposal of food waste either by land-filling or incineration will cause environmental pollution and engaged in high treatment cost. Composting can be a viable food waste management, however, less research works have focused on the degradation of small scale kitchen waste. In this study, co-composting of model kitchen waste, dried leaves and rice bran were inoculated with four different sources of microbial inoculants (MI) namely commercial Effective Microorganism (EM), Tempeh, Tapai, a mixture of Tempeh and Tapai and water as a control. It was found that the temperature of all four composting materials with MI can be heated up to a higher temperature (>50 o C) than the control and produced less offensive smells. All composts ended with a neutral or weakly alkaline pH value (pH 7 -8) and a C:N ratio of around 10 which indicating the maturation of composts. For enzymatic activities, the highest activity of amylase (73 -129 U/g) and cellulase (75 -148 U/g) occurred at the beginning of the composting process. The maximum activities of lipase (5 -10 U/g) and protease (46 -72 U/g) were at the middle stage of the composting process. The germination indexes of the five composts were larger than 100% indicating non-phytotoxic. Although the temperature profile and odour performance were outstanding in the presence of MI, most other parameters did not show significant differences when co-compositing of small scale model kitchen waste was carried out with an adequate initial C:N ratio and moisture content. Further study is needed to distinguish the potential beneficiary effects of MI for the composting of kitchen waste. Nevertheless, the comparable performance of Tempeh and Tapai with EM in composting suggested that Tempeh and Tapai can be used to substitute the function of EM as a cheaper and more available microbial source for the household.Keywords: composting, kitchen waste, effective microorganisms, tempeh, tapai Abstrak Pelupusan sisa makanan sama ada di tapak pelupusan atau pembakaran akan menyebabkan pencemaran alam sekitar dan menglibatkan kos rawatan yang tinggi. Pengkomposan merupakan cara pengurusan sisa makanan yang berpotensi tetapi kerja penyelidikan terkini kurang memberi tumpuan kepada degradasi sisa dapur yang berskala kecil. Melalui kajian ini, sisa model dapur, daun kering dan dedak padi telah dirawat dengan empat sumber mikrob yang berbeza iaitu komersial Mikroorganisma Efektif (EM), Tempeh, Tapai, campuran Tempeh dan Tapai dan air sebagai kawalan. Didapati bahawa suhu keempat -empat bahan kompos yang dirawat dengan inokulan mikrob boleh mencapai suhu yang lebih tinggi (>50 o C) berbanding kawalan dan menghasilkan bau yang kurang busuk. Semua kompos telah berakhir dengan nilai pH yang neutral atau beralkali lemah (pH 7-8) dengan nisbah C:N lebih kurang 10 yang menunjukkan kematangan kompos. Untuk aktiviti enzim, aktiviti tertinggi amilase (73 -129 U/g) dan selulase (75 -148 U/g) berlaku pada awal proses pengkomposan. Manakala, aktiviti maksimum lipase (5 -10 U/g) dan protease (46 -72 U/g) berad...