World Cities Summit

Almost a month later, and it seems like no one wants to participate in my survey on whether they like living in the city :-( Oh well, at least I tried. :-)

Anyway, the World Cities Summit will be held in Singapore from 28 Jun - 1 Jul, and there will be expert panel sessions on the challenges faced by cities. The themes for the summit are Leadership and Governance for Vibrant and Liveable Cities, Building Sustainable and Eco-friendly Cities and Fostering Harmonious and Sustainable Communities.

Hop over to their website if you're interested!

Confession....

Ugh, this month I have failed abysmally in my pledge to not buy new clothes. I was tempted in buying, no, I bought 2 pairs of shorts and a shirt.

Oil Spill Reaches Singapore's East Coast

Many of you may have read about the tanker collision off Singapore's coast. Great timing - not! We have one of the busiest waterways and you would think that the ship captains would at least exercise caution when navigating their ships. Apparently, 18,000 barrels of light crude oil leaked from the gaping hole. This may be a comparatively tiny amount compared with the six million gallons of crude that have spewed into the Gulf since the April 20 BP incident, BUT pollution is still pollution.

According to the Malaysian coast guard Commander Abdul Hadib Abdul Wahab, any environmental damage would be "very minimal." What does "very minimal" mean? It could mean anything!!!!

This incident really brings home what the Americans must be feeling about the BP incident. Time to push for more alternative energy sources.

Lah, lah, laaaaaaaaaah!

That's what you may get the next time you throw your recyclable in the recycling bin and you happen to live in Edmonton, Canada. The bins will start playing 2 thirty seconds blue tunes when someone opens the bin and throws in a recyclable. The tunes are there to encourage people to recycle. But I do think they are expensive - CD$160,000

Photo - CBC News (Canada)

Green wedding anyone?

NParks is promoting green weddings. Well, I'm already married, but here are some ideas they gave for lovebirds who plan to tie the knot. Wouldn't it be great to have a wedding planner in Singapore who does green weddings?

• Hold your wedding in a park or garden
• Use single layer invitation cards printed on recycled paper, treeless paper made from bamboo or other materials, or better yet, use e-invitations to reduce paper wastage
• If using disposable tableware, choose biodegradable products
• Encourage your guests to car-pool or van-pool
• Choose a caterer that is familiar with the venue to avoid any damage to the site during their setup or teardown
• Select wedding favors that are useful for your guests to minimise throwaways <Agy's note: why not give cake coupons?>
• Consider using pre-owned items (e.g. wedding gown, decorations) for your wedding
• Decorate your wedding venue with potted plants that you can use again to decorate your home instead of fresh cut flowers where possible
• Source for local flowers and plants to decorate the wedding venue to minimise resources used in transporting them
• Setup a gift registry to minimise unwanted gifts
• Let your guests know to avoid giving congratulatory cards but instead sign their best wishes on your wedding guestbook.
• Request for guests to donate towards an environmental cause
• Request for cleaners at the venue to separate recyclable items from those that are not and dispose them accordingly
• Avoid shark's fin in your menu
• Avoid the use of confetti

Fish or jobs?

Save 20 million jobs, or save depleting fish stocks?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/17/saving-fish-stocks-cost-jobs

Well, I think if people had listened many years ago I don't think the situation would come to this!

Photo: Fishing boats moored on the beach at Hastings, east Sussex. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/Guardian

Mini Melbourne in China?

It seems like EVERYONE is rushing to China to build a mini - !! The British (in Dongtan, Shanghai), the Singaporeans (Tianjin) and now the Melbournians (outside Tianjin, well because Melbourne is a sister city to Tianjin). Well, the reason (or one of the reasons is that China has a strategy to move around 50% of the country’s population from a rural to an urban environment by 2050. Whoever is going to be in charge of that will have one massive job to tackle!!!!

"Pitched at the rising Chinese middle class, the proposal embraces modern sustainable practice including buildings with five and six-star green ratings." ...... I hope this doesn't displace the less well off, or even send the message that only those of a certain class can enjoy sustainability.

Photo: The Age

Graffiti - Your reservoir starts here!

[Update on 27 May - apparently, the graffit is not paint but stickers!! Found one peeling off the drain today :-) ]

Not your usual graffiti, but these bright pictures on drain covers got my attention yesterday morning on my way to work! The Public Utilities Board came up with this to get the public more aware of water pollution and its impact on our water resources (ie. our reservoirs). I hope they used environmentally friendly paint (we wouldn't want that in our waters now, do we?), and that the pictures will be there for a while. If PUB does decide to remove them, I hope they use environmentally friendly ways too :-)

Green mall

Most of you probably have been to the eco-mall at Farrer Park near Little India. City Square Mall is touted as the first eco-mall in Singapore. It has been awarded the Building and Construction Authority's Green Mark Platinum Award and is also the first eco-mall with an integrated Urban Park.

The developer is City Developments Limited (CDL), and if you have been to their website , you will have noticed that Corporate Social Responsibility, including the environment, features highly in their work. CDL discloses their environmental initiatives (they have ISO14001 EMS) and performance to the public through their sustainability reports. They were only one of the few (you can count them on one hand) Singapore companies that reported to the Carbon Disclosure Project. OK, ok, this is not a promo of CDL, and I have no affiliation with them, but I don't recall many Singaporean blue chip companies being environmentally friendly.

Anyway, I actually enjoyed the NTUC supermarket the most because they had depositories for recyclables - cans and tetrapaks. NTUC shld expand this to their other stores. Anyway, one of the employees was emptying the collection point and there were A LOT of cans!

How to choose natural products

Green homes

Living in such a small space (less than a 2 bedroom HDB flat in Singapore) yet he makes use of every nook & cranny. Love the windows (although I didn't think the building owner would let him take a wall out, not in an HDB flat anyway), and the moving walls.

Via Swiss Miss - Thanks nausicaa!

Songdo International Business District

via: http://www.eco-asia.info/content/en/sp-songdo

Cosy communities key to livability: David Owen

He's the author of The Green Metropolis

"In the United States, New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprint of any Americans - about 7.1 metric tonnes per person per year, versus the national average of 24.5 metric tonnes.
"Spreading people out across the countryside may make them feel 'greener', but it does not reduce the damage that they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage while also making that damage harder to see and harder to address," he said.

Courtesy: Brisbane Times

City living or Suburbs?

After my blog on "Back to the city", I thought it would be interesting to see what people actually think. Which do you like, city or the suburbs? Vote now on the right of my blog!!!

The argument is that in a well-managed city, you have a lower carbon footprint, don't need to drive a car (because of great public transport), and most amenities are within walking distance.

Suburbs means closer to greenery, but you would need your car, your house is very big and you would need more energy to heat / cool it.

Competition!!

Not by me, but organised by NEA. Find the prizes a bit strange though. Why not make the winner an environmental ambassador or something useful like that?

More info about the competition at the NEA Clean & Green Facebook account!

Total Water Sufficiency by 2061

Singapore's 5th and largest Newater plant opened today. This plant recycles our water and what comes out is "newater" (just cleaned up water, if you're wondering!). It has a capacity of 50 million imperial gallons, or 228,000 cubic metres, of NEWater per day, and together with the other 4 plants, it will meet 30% of Singapore’s total water demand.

We've been importing water from Malaysia for quite a while, but with one of the agreements expiring next year, the new plant is timely! Our 2nd agreement with Malaysia will end in 2061.

Although we will be self-sufficient, I do hope that we conserve water. Just because we have a water recycling plant means we can use copious amounts of it. The technology used in the plant (reverse osmosis) is energy intensive so do bare in mind this fact when taking a shower!