The Internet’s Carbon Footprint.

Not so good!

From Mashable:

From Today:

Employment, rising costs of living and many other bread and butter issues have been so-called hot-button election topics but a group of environmentalists in the latest Green Drinks – an informal monthly gathering of environmentalists – is advocating for more green discussions in the new Parliament.

Together with seven panellists – leaders of environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), businessmen and a former Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) – some 40 participants discussed how environmental issues can be further advocated on a political level.

Former NMP and IUT Global CEO Edwin Khew said discussions on environmental issues in the latest Parliament that was dissolved yesterday were rare, adding that his predecessor NMPs had mostly raised bread and butter issues.

One example on the lack of green empathy was the national recycling rate of 58 per cent. If industrial recyclables from construction waste were excluded, the household recycling rate would sink to such a low rate it would “stick out like a sore thumb.”

While greater scrutiny of environmental issues is needed, the majority agreed that Singapore is not ready for a Green Party, as is the case in Germany and Australia.

Green issues could be looked at in totality as a part of all national issues, including defence, foreign affairs and housing, suggested participant Joseph Chun.

Another way would be to have an official to oversee green issues in every ministry, said Mr Mark Cheng, co-founder of NGO Avelife.

Panellist Allan Lim, CEO of Alpha Biofuels, suggested a bottom-up approach in pressurising politicians to be more environmentally aware.

This, he said, could be achieved by building a critical mass of environmentalist Singaporeans.

He asked – a rhetorical question perhaps – would political candidates be more inclined to attend Green Drinks sessions if they were held at a Community Club instead?

Another way to get more politicians to be more environmentally aware is to press for more green jobs, said Mr Wilson Ang, founder of ECO Singapore.

Agreeing, Mr Howard Shaw, former executive director of the Singapore Environment Council, added that a green economy can spur political will.

Despite the People’s Action Party’s promise to build a green and sustainable society, five previously elected Members of Parliament and Ministers of State have declined to attend Green Drinks gatherings.

Organisers say discussions at Green Drinks sessions will be collated and presented to the various political parties.

LATEST NEWS: The last day for song submissions has been extended to 4th July!!!

-

The NEA Eco Music Challenge is back!

Eco Music Challenge 2011 is an online song-writing competition organised by the National Environment Agency (NEA) for talented and passionate individuals to express their appreciation and support for our beautiful environment through music.

This year, we have (the awesome) Inch Chua on board to inspire everyone to write a song for a cleaner and greener world. On top of that, the top 3 winners will get to perform their song at Timbre @ The Substation! Sounds like fun?

Check out this year’s prizes:

Closing date for entries is 20th June 2011.

Visit the NEA Eco Music Challenge Website for more details. Also, like their Facebook page.

-

Oh yes, and if you missed out on last year’s competition, you can watch the 2 min video below to get up to speed.

-
So what are you waiting for? Start writing and submitting your songs NOW!

(and send this info to all your musically talented friends)

-

Here’s a thought exercise: Will a Green Party work here in Singapore?

Before I continue, allow me to lay down some disclaimers. I am no politician. I admire people in the public service community, and I appreciate all the work that has been done to get Singapore where we are today. Let’s not kid ourselves, we’re in a great position, we’re generally comfortable, and that’s in no small part due to the leaders of this country. Legislation, economics, social design, all factors were carefully planned and implemented as close to perfection as possible.

Let’s be honest. Singapore is a single party country as far as politics go. As such, I have to say that I am also all for the democratic process. I believe that there should be competition in the political arena. I will NOT vote for the opposition just because they are the opposition; in the same breath, I will NOT vote for the party in power just to keep status quo. Parties running for election must show a clear and concise plan, a willingness to execute at all cost. The plan needs to be well thought out, economically and socially sound, and should be sustainable in the long-run. The people in the party must be capable, must have some form of track record, and must be open.

What about a party that puts social and environmental concerns at the forefront of its plans? I’m talking about a comprehensive plan to push environmental protection legislation, promote social causes in the community, and back it up with legal and economical measures. Would Singaporeans go for that? Would you support this party?

This is also tricky on another level. To a very large extent, Singapore’s government has been a one-party system as mentioned previously. How will a new (young) party fare in Parliament, holding an expectedly low number of seat, affect legislation? Who will listen? Should the local Green Party be spun off from the current ruling party as opposed to a brand new party? Will it be a lost cause?

Point of clarification, for the purpose of this article, Green Parties (upper case first letters) refer to political parties that support the Green Politics ideology. Political parties can call themselves green parties (lower case first letters) if they generally support green policies, however, they would not be related to the Global Green Network. Green Parties follow a coherent ideology that includes not only environmentalism, but also other concerns such as social justice, consensus decision-making, and pacifism. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation for world peace.

Green parties are not new in in the world of politics. They are already in countries like the UK, Germany, and Australia. For a full list of Green Federations, Networks and National Green Parties go here.

The German Green Party, the first to achieve national prominence, was famous for their opposition to nuclear power, as well as an expression of anti-centralist and pacifist values. Notably, they reached an agreement in 2001 to end reliance on nuclear power in Germany, while in federal government with the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In Finland, the Finnish Green Party was the first European Green Party to be part of a national Cabinet.

While the 85 (to date) Green Parties are all related to the Global Greens, each party generally are free to make their own political moves – alliances with different parties, different stance on certain issues such as specific wars, but in general agree to adhere to the Global Green Charter laid out in 2001.

Should a Green Party be formed in Singapore? If so, should it find alliance with the ruling party, or an opposition?

Who would you like to see in the Green Party? Scientists? Career politicians? Civil servants? Activists? Who will you most likely listen to?

What should the Green Party stand for in terms of reforms and policies? Energy policies? Transportation upgrades? Housing? What are some policies and measures that you’d like to see pushed by such a party? What are your concerns?

Maybe there should be a spin-off from one of the current political parties, tightly related but not governed by the main party.

Whatever your views on these questions (and whatever questions you might have yourselves), I think we can agree that there needs to be more representation of sustainability issues in the political process in many countries, including Singapore. Whether it’s to enforce transparency in industry, or to dole out financial assistance to social enterprises, more people need to stand up for sustainability and environmentalism politically. Having an representative speak up in parliament on the validity of climate policies and environmental claims made in parliament is priceless, and it holds every member of the government accountable.

Once again, I reiterate that a politician representing sustainability and environmentalism cannot merely be making a lot of noise about climate change and demanding sweeping changes – ban oil, subsidise all electric/hybrid vehicles – without a valid social and economical support structure to back it up.

From CNA:

The National Environment Agency (NEA) has released the first official Clean and Green Singapore music album.

Entitled Eco Music Challenge Season 1, it said the music album hopes to touch the heart of every individual in the community, encouraging them to safeguard and cherish Singapore’s beautiful environment.

The music album comprises 15 environment tracks of different music genres and languages, ranging from jazz, pop and soft rock to contemporary folk.

These are original compositions by the selected 13 finalists of NEA’s inaugural Eco Music Challenge held last year to inspire the youths to show their appreciation for the environment through music.

Chief Executive Officer of NEA, Andrew Tan, said the album is uniquely Singapore, produced by youths, for youths. He added that just as Total Defence is the nation’s responsibility, environmental protection is the duty of every Singaporean.

NEA hoped to raise S$10,000 from the album sales to support the environmental initiatives of the Nature Society.

Proceeds from the album sales will go to the society’s activities of nature appreciation and nature study at Semakau Landfill.

Songs from the Eco Music Challenge album are available for download at S$0.99 per song or S$9.90 for the full album download at www.ecomusic.nea.sg. It is also on sale as a hardcopy compilation album at the NEA’s Customer Service Centre at S$11.90.

I believe this falls into the “it makes so much sense that we should feel stupid about not thinking about this earlier” section. We should keep this in mind for the day we decide that we want to get recycling programs to actually work in Singapore!

From GOOD:

Generally, recycling rates are calculated by the total tonnage or the percentage of material recycled. But if the goal of recycling is to reduce the environmental impact of that stuff, those ways of measuring recycling don’t make a lot of sense because not all recycling is equally valuable. Certain materials are way more carbon-intensive to produce, making the benefits of recycling them greater. And similarly, recycling processes themselves can be more or less energy-intensive.

In what it’s describing as a first-of-its-kind initiative, Scotland is completely reorganizing how it measures and incentivizes recycling to encourage cities to focus on what matters most: reducing carbon. The new “carbon metric” will

prioritise materials with a high carbon impact such as plastics and textiles, which currently have relatively low levels of recycling in Scotland. It will also highlight the relative merits of different waste management options, and will support the aspiration for greater ‘closed loop’ recycling markets, for example, by giving higher weighting to glass which is recycled back into glass rather than that which is used for aggregates or insulation materials.

At the same time, local governments will be focusing less on materials that aren’t as important to recycle in terms of carbon saved, like paper.

We’ve talked about Sustainable DJ’ing at Coachella, and this is probably the logical extension: Creating energy from your dance moves.

To my friends who work in nightlife: When will we see one of these in Singapore?

-

“Last weekend, 1400 club patrons at Temple Nightclub in San Francisco shook their booties and booted up the power of the sustainable dance floor. 480 Watts were generated continuously over the 10 hours of dancing; 30 watts were generated per panel and there were16 panels. People appreciated the connection between their energy and the energy of the dance floor. For Paul Hemming, Temple Nightclub’s founder, this wasn’t a one weekend gimmick, but part of his overall vision to make Temple the most sustainable dance club in the world.”

More on Treehugger.

How human beings (who are supposedly intelligent) reject the idea of global warming. If you have 10 minutes, you have to watch this!

Harvard Thinks Big 2010 – Daniel Gilbert – ‘Global Warming and Psychology’ from Harvard Thinks Big on Vimeo.

This is timely for us, so I’ve decided to put this up in its entirety.

Great read for anyone involved in the sustainability space, but more importantly, a good reminder about how we need to be communicating our ideas.

From The Big Sustainability Summit:

As sustainability professionals it is often very easy for us to slip into jargon and buzzwords that surround us daily in our workplace environments and quickly become second nature when communicating with one another. Words and phrases such as ‘climate change’, ‘peek oil’ and of course ‘sustainability’ itself have become a staple part of the sustainability professional’s vocabulary. This is absolutely fine as we have a strong understanding of what these words mean, we have a firm grasp of the concepts behind them and an all too acute awareness of the gloomy and foreboding facts and figures that support them. The problem is that ‘ethically aware people’ and ‘ethical consumers’ who also understand this language make up just 30% of the population, with the other 70% having a very vague notion of what sustainability is at best and with a large proportion who, put simply, just couldn’t care less.

If sustainability is to be scaled up to a level that effects real change and meets the very pressing deadlines of climate change then we need to engage this despondent demographic and we need to do it fast. We need to think ‘outside of the box’ and outside of what motivates us as environmentalists and ethically minded individuals and speak in a language that relates to the majority who behave and act on a very different set of values and principles. We need to speak inclusively and not exclusively. In order to do this we need to speak to what motivates them.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, as quoted in Global Cool’s forthcoming report ‘Selling Green Lifestyles: Learnings from Two Years’ Innovation’, ethical consumers (the 30%) are inwardly directed people who are driven by concerns such as ethics, stewardship of the earth, global issues, and future generations. To ‘inner-directed people’ failing crops in Africa or the sinking Maldives are their problem, so they were quick to buy fair-trade, for example, and are already acting on the climate. The other 70% is made up of ‘outer directed people’ and’ sustenance driven people’. Outer directed people are motivated by people they can see, and by the people who see them. ‘Outer directed’ people want to be visible, influential, admired – to have visible symbols of success. These people often have a strong interest in being sociable, fashionable, attending big parties and are also interested in power in political or commercial office. Sustenance driven people are primarily concerned about the world immediately around them – the safety and security of their family, their communities. So ‘sustenance driven’ people tend to live, or aspire to live, in detached houses and drive 4×4s, make low-risk financial investments, and be interested in perceived threats to their community, for example national security and immigration.

This is where one of the most important challenges for the creative industries lies in the 21^st century. As designers, PR professionals, advertisers strategists, journalists, artists, singers, actors and authors, we as communicators need to develop a verbal, written and visual language and lifestyle that creatively engages this 70%. This group of people don’t care about the planet, they care about ‘what’s in it for them’. So that is the level we need to meet them on. There are some excellent agencies and enterprises that are doing this already to great effect. Global Cool for example uses celebrity and festival culture to speak to it’s audience, one project saw them work with Eurostar, RailEurope and Mr & Mrs Smith Hotels to film various celebrities on train-based holidays across Europe. – “showing the destinations reachable within a sensible time, and the adventures to be had: you get time to read, you can have lunch with your pal in Paris and dinner in Geneva on the way. And you get to share a bunk bed cabin with your friend … and oh look, aren’t the bars nice on German trains! The journey is an adventure in itself” (Selling Green Lifestyles). The charity Orange RockCorps, gets thousands of young people to volunteer – by incentivising them with tickets to cool music gigs. Rachel Botsman’s book ‘Collaborative Consumption’ looks at already very successful schemes such as Zip Car (car sharing) Air BnB (peer-to-peer travel) andZopa (money lending). While clothes swapping parties, or ‘Swishing’ as coined by Futerra, are going from strength to strength on an international scale. None of these activities mention sustainability or climate change. In fact they are attractive, fun, fashionable and desirable ways to consume that just so happen to help us reach our climate change goals at the same time. After all, the climate doesn’t care how we get people to act, just as long as they do.

Joseph Maduma, graphic designer and editor of Good Design blog

So we received our free telephone directories today.

In fact we received 3 whole sets.

According to some governing body or another, Olive Ventures rented 2 “units” in Chinatown, when actually it’s just 2 floors of the same shophouse. That is a topic for another blog. So I’ll allow 2 sets. But 3? Weird. Delivery must’ve been tired from lugging all those plastic bags of directories around.

You know what’s even weirder? I haven’t flipped through a phone directory in about 3 years. Who does that anymore? Singapore is one of the most wired countries/cities in the world, and every business has their own website, shouldn’t looking up a number via a smartphone/computer be easy enough? Is there an opt out clause or something?

The truly frustrating thing is this. Have you tried using an online phone/address directory? It’s almost as if there’s a conspiracy to make that technology poorer so people will still have to print physical telephone directories! I think I’m onto something.

Wake up, powers-to-be. Stop going about your daily businesses like a robot. Read a little about what’s going on in the world. Learn about what people are doing in other countries. Just because you’re practically a monopoly in a small country like Singapore, it doesn’t mean squat. Things can change in an instant.