For internal circulation to the members and associates of the Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore
THE MAILROOM TEAM
Publisher: Melissa Tan
Editor: Edwin Pang Dy Editor: Darren Chia
Publications Sub-committee: Michael Ho Dr Kelvin Lee Andre Tay
6 Waste Management Associations Ink MOU to boost efforts in Asia Pacific
Source: Channel News Asia
Date: 22 October Venue: Max Atria at Singapore Expo
To boost efforts for greater sustainability in Southeast Asia’s waste management and recycling industry, six waste management associations from the region came together on Thursday (Oct 22) to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to mark the formation of the Asia Pacific Waste and Environment Alliance (APWEA).
The associations from Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines signed the MoU at the third WasteMET Asia Symposium. The event was witnessed by Singapore’s Senior Minister of State,Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of Health, Dr Amy Khor.
Members of the non-governmental business network will also be using this Alliance as a platform to share their knowledge and expertise, while adopting best practices.
Date: 22 & 23 October Venue: Max Atria at Singapore Expo
The “New 3Rs: Reinvent, Renew, Regenerate”-themed conference was successfully held over 2 days and covered topics such as building a sustainable business, domestic waste and recycling as well as industrial waste management. Different perspectives were shared by experts from Germany, Sweden,Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. Delegates also had the opportunity to network with each other and visit either the Senoko Waste-to-Energy plant or ECO Special Waste Management’s treatment and recycling facility.
Left: WMRAS’ Green Ambassador actor / producer Edmund Chen Zhicai speaking up for sustainability from his perspective as a “Citizen of the Earth”. Right: Audience at WasteMET Asia Symposium listening to a presentation.
Guangdong Environmental Sanitation Association visits Singapore waste and recycling companies
18 delegates from GDESA arrived a day before the WasteMET Asia Symposium for a day of site visits to Singapore waste and recycling companies on 21 October. The WMRAS secretariat assisted in the arrangements and accompanied the delegation to 800 Super Waste Management, LHT Holdings and Samwoh Eco-Green Building, the first building in the region to be constructed using up to 100% recycled concrete aggregate.
Mr Philip Lim, operations director of 800 Super, presenting to the GDESA delegates.
Left: Mr Pok Cheng San, HR & admin manager, giving a guided tour of LHT Holdings which deals in waste wood. Right: GDESA delegates posing for a picture at LHT with Mr Pok (centre in blue), GDESA chairman Chen Shankun (on his left) and WMRAS executive director Edwin Pang (on his right).
Mr Tiah Guo Wei, research engineer at Samwoh Corporation taking GDESA delegates through the many informative and interesting exhibits at Samwoh’s R&D Centre as well as visitor gallery. The beautifully-designed facility also played host to delegates from the Indonesia Solid Waste Association the next day.
WMRAS presents its 1st Excellence Awards
The inaugural industry awards for WMRAS were presented at a dinner held during the WasteMET Asia Symposium 2015 on 22 October. The objectives of the awards were to recognize, encourage and motivate existing employees serving the waste management and recycling industry.
Singapore’s Senior Minister of State, Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of Health, Dr Amy Khor, presented the awards to the following winners who were accompanied on stage by their employers:
COMING UP!
The event is broadly divided into the “Keynote Session: The Circular Economy” and the “Industry Cases Session”. The latter covers business models, wastes revival, rethink resources, and re-engineering for sustainability. In this conference, SIMTech will also introduce a new capability related to water efficiency.
This year, SMC’15 is co-organised with Singapore Business Federation (SBF) and supported by WMRAS.
Winners of the 2015 Green Technology and Green Enterprise Award will share their green journey with participants. The event will also feature complimentary clinic sessions on sustainable manufacturing where industry participants can consult experts on issues in sustainable manufacturing.
“Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected. We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?”, says Mr David Steiner, the chief executive officer of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the US.
Recycling has been relentlessly promoted as a goal in and of itself: an unalloyed public good and private virtue that is indoctrinated in students from kindergarten through college. As a result, otherwise well-informed and educated people have no idea of the relative costs and benefits.
The environmental benefits of recycling come chiefly from reducing the need to manufacture new products – less mining, drilling and logging. But that’s not so appealing to the workers in those industries and to the communities that have accepted the environmental trade-offs that come with those jobs.
For centuries, the real cost of labour has been in
creasing while the real cost of raw materials has been declining. That’s why we can afford to buy so much more stuff than our ancestors could. As a labour-intensive activity, recycling is an increasingly expensive way to produce materials that are less and less valuable.
The National Environment Agency (NEA) signed an agreement on Monday (Oct 26) with a consortium to develop Singapore’s sixth waste-to-energy plant. The consortium, which comprises Hyflux and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will develop the plant through its project company, TuasOne. Slated to be Singapore’s largest, the plant will have the capacity to incinerate 3,600 tonnes of waste and generate 120 megawatts of electricity per day.
To help meet the country’s increasing waste disposal needs, it will also provide waste-to-energy services to NEA over a 25-year period, from 2019 to 2044. Construction work is expected to commence in early 2016 and end in 2019.