Sustainability Mentorship Programme 2015

Registrations are now open for the Sustainability Mentorship Programme 2015! Calling on 19-35 year olds keen on sustainability leadership and becoming sustainability champions. Registrations close on 4 Jan, details below!

The Straits Times: Is it going to flood? Check Facebook and Twitter

Government agencies have been putting out iPhone applications to swiftly communicate updates to the weather and environment related incidents, as well as to collate feedback from the public. The environment minister weighs in.

The Straits Times reports.

Is it going to flood? Check Facebook and Twitter

When the waters rise and a flash flood threatens, putting its reactions under the spotlight, one of the first things the Ministry of Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) will do is to turn to Facebook and Twitter.

It will use a range of online tools to broadcast real-time information on water levels as well as CCTV images of flood-prone areas, while also monitoring netizens’ messages for updates.

The moves reflect MEWR’s increasing use of social media as part of its drive to engage Singaporeans online.

In fact, having learnt lessons from the spate of floods in the last two years, the ministry now has one of the highest number of social media tools and initiatives among government agencies.

Such engagement, said its minister Vivian Balakrishnan, is less about being liked or popular online, and more about being transparent and open – and getting the job done better.

And by providing more information online, MEWR has also helped to improve national dialogue on issues such as flooding, he told The Straits Times in a recent interview that laid out his ministry’s social media policy.

‘My sense of it is, it’s a far more constructive, engaged tone in the national conversation on environmental issues than we’ve ever had,’ he said.

MEWR, he added, hopes to leverage on the increased engagement to create a ‘community of problem solvers’, in which the public works together with the Government to tackle issues.

Dr Balakrishnan also noted that providing timely and accurate data would not only be useful but also correct misinformation posted online.

So while dramatic pictures of flooded areas may go viral on the Internet, the PUB’s up-to-date information will also show the public how quickly the floods cleared, and that PUB was on top of the situation.

‘When someone posts something false, it is evident quickly that it’s not the truth,’ he said.

At the same time, MEWR and its agencies will treat complaints filtering through social media channels as a ‘data point’ to be collected and responded to.

This open and transparent approach, said the minister, ‘shows that we have nothing to hide’. It also opens up government data for the public to ‘analyse and gain a deeper appreciation’ of the issues, he added.

MEWR’s approach is part of a bigger effort by the Government to engage the public through social media more effectively. Earlier this week, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Yaacob Ibrahim had urged the public sector to recognise the strengths of social media and adapt to what it has to offer.

MEWR has taken pains to embrace social media as it interacts frequently with the public on daily issues such as cleanliness and public health.

This week, it revamped its website, saying that the upgrade was needed to better communicate policies while also making it easier for the public to give feedback.

Dr Balakrishnan noted that such engagement efforts would not have been possible ‘in the old days’. It was expensive to have sensors in every drain, and there was no Twitter to keep people and officials updated.

‘Now you are limited by your own imagination,’ he said. ‘We’re only scratching the surface.’

Indeed, by making data more readily available, MEWR has given the private sector more opportunities to get involved in data collection and distribution.

Local app developer BuUuk, for example, has combined flood alerts from PUB and heavy rain alerts from the National Environment Agency (NEA) to create a mobile phone ‘app’ called ‘WeatherLah’, which lets users monitor drains and canals fitted with sensors and tells them if rain is predicted at their location.

Other apps in the works include one allowing users to send information about environmental lapses to the Department of Public Cleanliness, and one that warns of risk of lightning strikes.

Just last week, NEA launched two new apps, at a cost of $31,000, that helps track energy consumption and compare energy costs of different home appliances.

Such investments, noted Dr Balakrishnan, were ‘worth doing’ because they make daily life better for the public and also build trust and enhance engagement.

Observers like MP Lee Bee Wah, chairman of the Government Parliamentary Committee for National Development and Environment, praised such efforts, noting that the public is increasingly relying on social media tools to communicate.

But others such as local environmentalist Olivia Choong, 33, said that although government agencies have fared well in putting out information through various tools, more can be done.

‘Not that many have downloaded the environment-related apps so there is room for more public visibility for these,’ she said.

SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS AT A GLANCE

Image taken from Edlimagno

The Business Times: Local Access

The Business Times also carried this interesting article on local farmers and locavorism, Green Drinks has a mild mention.

Local Access

It’s been a few years since the locavore movement – which advocates eating as close to the food source as possible to reduce one’s carbon footprint – took root in Singapore. In time for Earth Day tomorrow, Debbie Yong talks to producers and consumers to see what the future holds for the movement.

Supply-side challenges

PILES of scrap metal dot its entrance and just beyond, a cluster of metal sheds sit serenely, speckled orange by rust and dust. To the first-time visitor, Lian Wah Hang Farm would seem to be more like a sleepy wasteland than an active quail farm – a judgment probably passed so often that farm owner William Ho even pre-empts our thoughts.

“Sorry about the mess,” he says as he drives us into his 2.7-hectare quail farm in Kranji, and which he repeats while leading us into a large quail nursery.

His current state of limbo is not self-willed. Mr Ho has, in fact, close to $300,000 ready to be invested in renovation works. However, with only 3.5 years left on his existing 20-year lease, and no indication as yet on whether this is likely to be renewed, he’s not sure whether or when to start rolling out his plans.

Mr Ho’s woes are merely one among the handful of concerns that local food producers face, and which limit the supply of home-grown produce here.

Bureaucratic tangles

Former restaurant owner and chef Cesare Cantarella sold his businesses after 20 years to set up a Southern Italy-inspired dairy farm Cantalatt in Lim Chu Kang last year, but despite ambitious plans to extend his production to kefir, yoghurt and fresh cheeses like mozzarella, ricotta and mascarpone on top of his current fresh milk business, little progress has been made because of licensing limitations. He adds: “The reason for this, I believe, is bureaucracy, an adjective normally not associated with Singapore, which is known worldwide for being an efficient and well-organised nation.”

It doesn’t help that the date of the announcement of Urban Redevelopment Authority’s Concept Plan 2011 has been extended. The Concept Plan, which was supposed to be revealed last year, was highly anticipated by the local farming community as it will give a clearer indication of whether the land the farmers are sitting on will continue to be designated for food production.

If he gets the green light, Mr Ho plans to build an onsite slaughterhouse (his quails are slaughtered on a poultry farm in Senoko currently) and spiff up his sheds with modern technology in order to double production to 120,000 eggs a day.

The driving engine behind the farm, however, will be the visitor’s centre he plans to carve out in the front 30 per cent of his plot. He has dreams of a lecture theatre and perhaps a museum showcasing a collection of antiques and farming equipment accumulated from when his father used to run the farm in the ’70s and ’80s.

Back in the 1990s, up to 300 visitors would pack the farm on weekends for free farm tours, but the avian flu kicked in and public access to the farm has been legally restricted ever since.

“It’s the McDonald’s theory: by luring in and educating the younger generation, they’ll bring the message home to their parents,” Mr Ho explains of his plans to revive agro-tourism in Singapore. “If the model takes off as a financially viable one, it will hopefully inspire the younger generation to enter the industry.”

Believing farming to be a sunrise industry rather than a sunset one, he adds: “It’s not just a business, you are doing your country a service in terms of national security.”

To steel our food-importing country against global price fluctuations and food safety scandals, the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) aims to get local production levels to 30 per cent of overall consumption for eggs, 15 per cent for fish and 10 per cent for leafy vegetables.

Currently, egg production stands at 23 per cent, 7 per cent for fish and 7 per cent for leafy veggies, and there are a total of 180 farms here producing all three.

To give farmers a financial boost, the AVA set up a $5-million Food Fund in 2009 to help farmers improve their technology and upgrade production capability. The fund was topped up to $20 million last year, with $6 million currently being spent on 15 projects.

Despite common grouses that the quality of local produce is far inferior to imported goods, Mr Ho believes that the made-in-Singapore label is the best insurance a consumer can get.

“The AVA checks up on my farm daily. Where else can you find food at such controlled and high standards?” he laughs. “Buying a Singapore-made product is the best quality assurance you can find.”

Physical limits

But not everything is going as swimmingly as it sounds. Farmers who fall outside the three production categories of fish, eggs and vegetables claim they have less access to financial support. There is also a limit to how much producers can suppress costs to stay competitive with imports from neighbouring regions like Malaysia.

“Manpower costs are much higher in Singapore, and it takes repeated trials before finding the right type of fish to breed, they don’t just grow overnight,” notes Malcolm Ong of Metropolitan Fisheries, one of Singapore’s largest fish farms.

And, perhaps an issue most pressing to urban farmers in Singapore: the need to jostle for space among all that built-up concrete. “It’s not like I’ve got a nice pristine island all to myself, I have to share resources with all these buildings and developments nearby. Also, with more land reclamation, we’ve got less sea to work with,” he adds.

Increasing productivity

The solution, Mr Ong believes, lies in productivity. He plans to triple the concentration of fish at a second fish farm he plans to set up off the coast of Changi later this year, which will ideally be oxygenated round the clock by solar-powered pumps.

“We have limited space and manpower, so our key goal is to be able to produce much more fish within the same area, while using technology to keep costs down.”

He aims to increase production of his mullet, milkfish and recently introduced breed of saltwater tilapia from its current 600,000kg to 800,000kg in a year. The second farm is targeted to produce 500,000kg of fish within the next four years.

Mr Ong hopes to eventually see supermarkets here, like those in the United States, dedicate a section of shelves to local produce, “but that’s provided all of us (farmers) do our part in producing”.

But for now, a centralised farmers’ market is a first step.

Ivy Singh-Lim, president of the Kranji Countryside Association (KCA), which represents 10 farms raising fish, vegetables and animals in Singapore, is hoping to turn a deserted former army barracks in Lim Chu Kang into a farmers’ market, hopefully by the end of the year.

Besides serving as a platform for her neighbouring farmers to showcase their produce, the market will also provide employment to the “structurally unemployed and unemployable”, such as special needs individuals.

“Where are you going to fit the kids who aren’t going to grow up to be bankers and lawyers?” she asks rhetorically. “Craft and cottage industries are present and active in other first world countries. We are ready now to have a platform for such individuals to showcase their talents.”

Citing the Republic’s recent successful bid to host the 27th Commonwealth Agricultural Conference in 2016, she says: “We’ve got the whole world looking at us as the leader and centre of urban agriculture.”

Then, in her signature tough-talking style, she adds: “If I had my way, I’d convert all HDB gardens into edible gardens, and plant edible vegetables in the upcoming Gardens by the Bay.”

Demand-side issues

CHALLENGE any chef –  or anyone really – to whip up a meal using only local produce and you’d probably come up against a wall of cynicism, or at best, a skimpy salad with a couple of hydroponically grown vegetables tossed in.

After all, what else could our highly urbanised and land-scarce country possibly have to offer?

Plenty, according to one chef. So impressed with his discoveries out in Singapore’s Lim Chu Kang farmlands was executive chef Stephan Zoisl of modern European restaurant Novus that he padded up his initially planned four-course locavore- themed dinner to six courses, on top of three amuse bouche servings.

The one-off dinner menu, to be served at the restaurant tomorrow to mark Earth Day, includes dishes such as quail egg and chamomile-infused quail tea, sous vide crocodile with cactus, and hibiscus-flavoured tofu –  so exotic-sounding, few would believe it’s 90 per cent locally sourced.

“Besides reducing the carbon footprint by using local products, you also get them fresher and at a lower cost compared to having to fly or ship them in from overseas,” says Chef Zoisl. He is among a growing handful of chefs attempting to fit in local produce on their menus wherever they can.

“Chefs are normally the ones leading the way in promoting provenance of food, especially when it comes to locavorism, and I have seen an increase in chef interest over the past few years,” observes Christina Crane, who used to run interest group Locavore.sg and locavore cafe Dapao in Amoy Street. She shut the business a few months ago and moved to Vancouver due to a family illness.

Quality issue

But going down the locavore route is not a bump-free journey. Despite the promise of significant savings, the inconsistent quality of the still-fledgling farming industry here makes it hard for commercial kitchens to support local growers on a larger scale, say most chefs.

Executive chef of Tower Club Frank Kilian shares that local tomatoes, at $3 per kilo, are about a 10th the price of imported tomatoes from Europe, but their quality might not be up to par for high-end restaurants. He adds: “Local fish, for example, is normally delivered in a plastic bag and this is not acceptable for us.”

“As a Western chef, we always hear how great the food is here in Singapore, and it is. But for a sustainable chef, there are unfortunately a lot of obstacles, such as having to pay an extreme amount of money for the same quality as what I get back home,” notes Ryan Sonson, executive chef at The Sentosa Resort. The native Californian also laments Singapore’s lack of farmers’ markets, like Borough Market in London, Nelson Market in New Zealand or San Francisco’s Ferry Building market, to link up producers with consumers.

“In Singapore, you call someone up on the phone and you pick your ingredients off a black and white list. You barely get in touch with fresh produce,” agrees Bjorn Shen, chef-owner of Artichoke restaurant. The Singaporean used to personally select his beef and fresh cheeses in Australia’s wine country when he worked as a sous chef in Brisbane.

Changing mindsets

The locavore movement works in countries like Australia and the US, he surmises, because most people grow up in suburban or rural farming areas and then move to the city, so they can identify with the cause. “But it is not a mentality natural to local diners to want or appreciate this,” he says. “Singaporeans look for cheap, tasty, and filling.”

“People don’t consider food miles or see an issue with a large carbon footprint in this area since they feel that we import at least 98.5 per cent of our food anyway,” Olivia Choong, co-founder of environmental group Green Drinks Singapore, further explains.

It is ironic that tourists love to go to “local” seafood restaurants to feast on canadian geoduck, Sri Lankan crab, Alaskan crab, Scottish bamboo clams – ingredients probably flown a further distance than the tourists themselves.
Adrian Ling, chef-owner, Pamplemousse

And while there is a growing body of well-travelled locals who appreciate the idea of eating local, few are ready to pay for it – an attitude that dampens the commercial viability of locavorism. It doesn’t help that trendy buzzwords like organic, fairtrade or hormone-free are applied liberally to many things these days, or sometimes even exploited by profit-seekers to nudge up prices.

“I’ve got food bloggers saying that I mention local mushrooms in my menu as an excuse to charge people $5 more,” adds an agitated Mr Shen. In fact, local eggs cost him five cents more per egg than their Malaysian counterparts, but he absorbs the additional monthly overheads.

Likening the locavore movement to the organic trend, Mr Sonson adds that “customers may also not be willing to pay premium prices when there is a plethora of cheaper dining options like food courts and hawker centres available”.

Practical hindrances

Then, there are the niggling logistical issues for restaurants who want to source directly from producers. Few farmers provide direct delivery and some don’t work with intermediary distributors, says Mr Zoisl, so he has to drive out there to pick up supplies himself, which chalks up significant time and labour costs when done over an extended period.

The smaller farmers also do not have as efficient logistics and finance systems as larger suppliers, so they cannot offer credit lines and will only take payments on a cash-on-demand basis, points out Pamplemousse’s chef-owner Adrian Ling.

Mr Ling fronts local ingredients in his East-West creations, such as churning out fresh cheese from goat’s milk bought from Hays farm in Lim Chu Kang, and serving it with beetroot, pickled jambu air, and laksa leaf meringue, or turning fresh milk from local farm Cantalatt into ice cream that is paired with gula melaka butterscotch and kueh lapis.

Despite these attempts, however, Mr Ling does not foresee local farms providing a full spectrum of ingredients to sustain a varied and complete diet of an average Singaporean anytime soon, “as basic things such as salt, oil, certain meats, rice and flour are not produced here”.

He adds: “However, if the term locavore is to be applied regionally, meaning to source from the region of South-east Asia, I think it is highly possible.”

The climate as well as high property prices further deter many farmers from growing space-intensive crops like melons which are a dime a dozen on neighbouring Malaysian farms.

“You have to concentrate on what is easy to grow and then you have to do it in mass,” says Mr Zoisl. But this also has its downsides, adds Mr Shen. “Whatever is grown or raised in Singapore is not very special.”

Commercially successful farmers largely produce to meet bulk orders from supermarkets. “I have yet to find many artisanal growers who can provide more heirloom vegetables like striped cucumbers, albino squash and other natural wild stuff,” he says. “Supermarkets are only looking for perfection and symmetry, but the ugliest tomatoes are usually the nicest ones.”

Mr Shen is currently working to launch a vegetable sharing programme where homegrowers, and institutions such as schools and old folks homes, can sell the products they grow to his restaurant, and hopes to link up with other locavore chefs to collaborate as part of a collective.

“It is ironic that tourists love to go to ‘local’ seafood restaurants to feast on Canadian geoduck, Sri Lankan crab, Alaskan crab, Scottish bamboo clams – ingredients probably flown a further distance than the tourists themselves,” quips Pamplemousse’s Mr Ling.

The Business Times: Posh for a Cause

The Business Times published this article over the weekend, and Green Drinks has been mentioned.

Posh for a Cause

In celebration of Earth Day tomorrow, fashionistas can now tog out in high style and not worry about the environment, as eco designs go upmarket and uber-chic. 

THE one question posed to every celebrity on the red carpet has always been – you’ve guessed it – “Who are you wearing?” But these days, entertainment reporters should be swapping the interrogative pronoun to “what”. That’s because red carpet style is slowly going green, and we’re not just talking about the season’s penchant for emerald hues.

Thanks to Livia Firth, eco-campaigner and wife of the Oscar-winning Colin Firth, celebrities have been sporting strange but sustainable materials on the glitziest red carpets. Mrs Firth launched a Green Carpet Challenge in 2009 to encourage designers to create one-off red carpet looks for her celeb friends. She herself wore, not miles of gossamer-light tulle or –  heaven forbid –  fur to this year’s Golden Globes, but an Armani gown made from recycled plastic bottles.

Since then, Meryl Streep has worn a gold draped gown made from eco-certified fabric by Lanvin; Julianne Moore sported a Tom Ford cocktail dress made from fabric recycled from a vintage dress (which was, aptly enough, a shade of absinthe green); and Viola Davis wore a salmon-pink Valentino gown which was also made from recycled plastic bottles to the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards (Baftas).

So it was more than timely that, last week, retail heavyweight H&M launched an eco-friendly red carpet collection made from organic cotton and hemp, and recycled polyester. The Swedish chain store has worked with Hollywood stylist du jour Elizabeth Stewart, whose client list includes Julia Roberts and Cate Blanchett, on the Exclusive Conscious collection, a posh extension of its three-year-old Conscious line of sustainable clothing (a floor-grazing gown with plisse meringue skirt, for example, is going for $549).

H&M is the biggest user of organic cotton in the world, and was the first retailer to introduce garments made of organic hemp. “For H&M, sustainability is a natural part of doing business in a globalised world and we look to making our products more sustainable on a daily basis,” says Lisa Chai, PR and marketing manager for H&M Singapore.

As expected, celebrities such as Michelle Williams and Kristin Davis were clamouring to wear the upmarket looks from the label, better known for its affordable, fast fashion togs, thanks to its eco cred. But such high-profile eco-fashion launches lead cynics to wonder, are retailers jumping on the green bandwagon just to grab headlines? According to local environmentalist and green publicist Olivia Choong, long-term efforts from brands are true indicators of their commitment to saving the earth.

“Fashion brands should steer away from making eco collections a one-off event, as it comes across as gimmicky and opportunistic,” says Choong, who founded environmental networking and information sharing group Green Drinks, and recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of chemicals in skincare and cosmetics. “If businesses really want to help the environment, they need to look at greening their supply chain, materials, product life cycle, and using their brand as a vehicle to communicate environmental messages.”

For founder of organic cotton casual fashion brand Etrican, Dragos Necula, the more lavish eco-fashion offerings of late reflect a shift in mindset: While green fashion may have been started by environmentalists who were focused on the ethos of the movement, and not necessarily aesthetics, eco-fashion today is highly sophisticated and trend-driven.

“It became trendy to talk about eco products and responsible living and of trendsetters like celebrities and high-end designers who pick up on it,” says Mr Necula. “In addition, committing to working with eco-friendly materials is challenging and can quickly become an expensive undertaking because of the limited supply.

This is why we are now mostly seeing higher- end, more expensive eco fashion lines emerging.”

Luxe brand Stella McCartney, for example, is also a certified carbon neutral company and doesn’t use leather or fur; while Burberry has adopted animal welfare guidelines, closely monitors its exotic skins supply chain, and supports efforts to improve transparency in the leather industry.

And the upmarket eco-fashion trend isn’t just limited to frou-frou eveningwear. One designer known for her sophisticated, avant-garde designs for men and women admits that it’s been an uphill battle going green.

Berlin-based designer Esther Perbandt, whose pre-Spring 2013 collection will be available here from May 17 on digital trunk show portal http://www.futurefashionnow.com, tried to adopt sustainable production practices and materials three years ago, after participating in a programme which had designers from Copenhagen and Berlin try to find their own sustainable fashion criteria through a series of seminars. Rather than create just three “green” outfits as required by the initiative, she transformed 70 per cent of her collection into a sustainable range.

“I was also rather inspired by the idea that going green could serve as a marketing strategy and be good for business,” explains Ms Perbandt in an e-mail interview.

“But after that one season, I realised that it was more difficult than expected, especially since my ambitions for my designs required more than what was available through sustainable sources.”

Unlike other designers creating just one-off sustainable outfits, however, Ms Perbandt was determined to keep striving towards an environmentally sustainable business. Today, about 80 per cent of her Spring/Summer 2012 collection is now environmentally sound.

“It is so much easier to start a brand with a sustainable concept as you work with the right calculations and price positioning from the get-go, after conducting market research on materials and conditions,” she adds, while explaining that she has been absorbing the additional costs involved in going green and maintaining her prices. Her cerebral and often androgynous styles are priced from 150 euro ($247) for a top to 550 euro for a dress and 600 euro for a jacket.

And, as much as upscale eco fashion adds a much-needed dose of glamour to a niche industry, Mr Necula reckons that the focus should be on affordable green clothing that is accessible to the masses.

“As it gains popularity and more customers start buying into the concept, the supply and range of eco-friendly fabrics will increase, more designers will jump on the bandwagon and prices will come down. As a result, most people will eventually be able to afford it and eco fashion will become the standard, replacing fast fashion,” says Mr Necula.

Because, at the end of the day, any style aesthete with a conscience would want to give a guilt-free answer to that all-important question, “What are you wearing?” on the red carpet, and practically everywhere else.

Our radio interview on 938Live’s Talkback programme

Last week, we were interviewed on Talkback, a current affairs programme by 938Live, about the National Climate Change Secretariat’s (NCCS) call for feedback on ways to reduce emissions from households, transport and businesses. We were featured alongside the Singapore Environmental Council’s (SEC) new Executive Director, Jose Raymond.

To hear the interview, please click here.

Image taken from 938Live

Sustainable fashion workshop by key eco fashion players in Singapore, Nov 13

Green Drinks Singapore is collaborating with Choo Yilin, JUJUBE, and Terra Plana to talk about the sustainable fashion industry in Singapore, the issues of the industry, and their design approaches to these issues. 

Through The Sustainable Luxury Design Workshop, sustainable artisanal jeweller Choo Yilin, ecological apparel label JUJUBE, and ethical and sustainable footwear retailer Terra Plana Singapore hope to raise the consciousness of Singaporeans towards the lifecycle of their fashion purchases, as well as encourage responsible shopping.

The workshop takes place on November 13, admission is free. Do view the details below.

Big thanks to Olivier Dyens of Senso, and Lily Lim of The Soirée Planner for making this event possible.