Month: April 2014

With the development of Singapore, an inevitable product of advancement is air pollutants. Increased urbanisation and industrialization could pose a threat to the air quality of any living environment. A recent case would be the transboundary smoke haze from Indonesia which has significantly affected Singapore s air quality during the South West monsoon. Hence, in view of a growing concern of Earthlink NTU’s aim to raise awareness about air pollution and its harmful effects, South West Eco Day Out 2014 would be used as a platform for such education purposes.

Steadily total waste generation growing is also a serious problem faced with by Singapore. Despite the growing population and the gross domestic product, total waste generation every year has already been more than 7000 tons per day. In order to solve this, the implementation of several waste management initiatives such as volume reduction, waste recycling and waste minimization have been carried out to reduce the pressure brought by waste generation. Hence, to further encourage the awareness of 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), Earthlink NTU also aims to educate the daily actions and importance of 3Rs in the coming South West Eco Day Out 2014.

The objective of this event is to raise awareness about the importance of taking up an environmental lifestyle in Singapore. Many aspects of promoting such lifestyles will be covered by the different agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Earthlink NTU will play her part through focusing on the themes of both 3Rs and raising awareness of the potent effects of air pollution and methods to protect oneself from it.

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Date: 25th of January 2014
Time: 0830 – 1800
Venue: NTU, Labrador Park, Esplanade Park,
Fort Canning Park, Singapore Botanic Gardens
This event aims to foster the bond among the subcommittees as well as team building for the subcommittees inter-portfolio. The main committees will take this opportunity to achieve cohesion and facilitate communication among the subcommittees. For subcommittees, they will get to know their team members better and hopefully creating a sense of belonging in a big family.
In addition, this event will introduce several parks in Singapore to Earthlink members under the programme “Race Among Nature”. The idea is to warmly welcome back the members from the holiday via interaction with Mother Nature and kickstarts the new semester freshly and energetically. At the same time, the members will be introduced to mangrove habitats, Singapore shore plants, and history of Singapore when the members visit Labrador Park and Fort Canning Park. The educational games will promote recycling awareness, efforts and understanding of environmental preservation and conservation is everyone responsibilities.
Overall, the outdoor trip will bond the members for improved interaction, teamwork and prepare them for the fulfilling semester ahead.
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Date: 14th of January to 23rd of February 2014
Venue: Inter Hall Games Vanue, NTU
Green Games is an initiative to bring in the eco-friendly element to the annual inter hall games conducted in NTU during the months of December to February. The Inter Hall Games (IHG) is a period where all sixteen halls of NTU are engaged in a healthy competition across various sports with outstanding displays of sportsmanship, team work and camaraderie. Often during these games, the welfare committees of the halls prepare refreshments and welfare packages for the players. This consists of mainly canned sports drinks such as 100 plus, Aquarius and the like. On average, during each game, 15-20 cans are thrown away. Earthlink NTU has identified this a key area to recycle aluminum cans in large quantities and is coming up with a unique pilot event to start a first of its kind recycling campaign in NTU.
To implement said recycling, can recycling bins will be placed at strategic locations at the sports complexes in NTU between January 14th and February 23rd 2014. Hall JCRCs and hall players will be informed of these bins so that they can utilize them to recycle the cans. We hope to collect 300-400 cans over the period of a month. Our primary aim is to increase awareness about this event. We hope to raise participation levels in the coming years and we hope recycling can become a main feature in several events in the years to come.

Date: 21st of February 2014
Time: 1430 – 1600
Venue: Keppel Seghers Tuas Waste-to-Energy Plant
Keppel Seghers, member of the Keppel Infrastructure group, is the environmental arm of Keppel Corporation listed in Singapore. Keppel Seghers offers a large portfolio of comprehensive environmental solutions by undergoing several scopes of activities such as technology development, design, operation and maintenance of plants.
The objective of Keppel Seghers is to provide full solutions for water, waste and energy. From wastewater treatment to waste control, Keppel Seghers is able to meet the challenges and protecting the environment while enriching the lives of communities. During this industrial visit, members will be briefed on how solid waste is incinerated and how energy is generated through the burning of rubbishes. Members will also have the chance to tour and observe the whole operation of the plant.
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Home to a wide variety of fishes, sponges and other interesting marine life, coral reefs are an essential part of a thriving marine ecosystem. Despite heavy development and reclamation along many of Singapore s shores, there still exists pristine reefs and abundant marine life on the southern islands of Singapore.

This guided walk on the shores of Sisters Island, one of the islands located south of Singapore, aims to provide participants with an informative and enjoyable outdoor experience. Through the guided walk led by experienced nature guides Mr Ron Yeo and his team, participants will discover the rich biodiversity on our rocky shores and coral reefs. This walk will prove to be a unique experience of discovery as participants will learn about the various types of coastal vegetation native to Singapore, see first-hand the colourful corals and anemones, and encounter the charismatic denizens of the sea, such as sea stars and sea cucumbers. Through this walk, we also hope that participants will not only bond through shared experiences in nature but also be inspired to conserve and protect our natural habitats.

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 Bring Your Own Container is an initiative by the Campaign Management portfolio to raise awareness about the excessive use of disposable cutlery and containers and to encourage the NTU community to reduce disposables by bringing their own cutlery and containers for takeaway orders.

Disposables provided by canteen vendors in NTU are mostly Styrofoam and plastics (be it biodegradable, corn ware or non-biodegradable). Earthlink members will spread the rationale behind this campaign to their peers in order to make our efforts appreciated by NTU members.

Earthlink also aimed to continue and expand the Bring Your Own Bag Campaign in an effort to minimize the excessive use of disposable plastic bags. We wanted the practice of students bringing and using their own reusable bag along to grow in NTU in order to control the issuance of disposable plastic bags. Our vision is that NTU community will readily choose to cut down on plastics as they get more knowledgeable about the significant environmental impact of plastic pollution particularly on marine ecosystem. We also aimed in making the habits of bringing your own bag to a stage where it forms a part of our lifestyle.

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Singapore is a very technologically advanced society compromising of a large proportion of  tech-savvy people. With the current exponential technological upgrades in all kinds of gadgets, people are increasingly deeming the older models as obsolete and discarding them in pursuit of the latest trending gadgets.

This has led to a rise of problem of improper dumping of Electronic waste (E waste) that is highly hazardous for our environment. Our agenda of holding this event is to spread awareness about what is e waste, why people should recycle it instead of discarding it and how can they play a part in recycling e-waste. Also, we will be doing e-waste collection for recycling purposes.

Also to help us achieve this, we have invited Nokia to partner us in this event as Nokia is the face of mobile phone recycling in Singapore, being the largest voluntary mobile phone recycling scheme worldwide.

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World Water Day has been celebrated by many countries around the world for more than 18 years now. The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative driven by the UN Water Group. The objective is to remind people about the significance of fresh water and to promote sustainability for fresh water resources management. Here in Singapore, PUB (Public Utilities Board) as the National Water Agency has been organising World Water Day celebrations annually.

As part of this year celebrations, a series of fun and exciting activities will be taking place at Marina Barrage on the 15th of March, 2014 which is the anchor site. The WWD Celebrations will also be concurrently celebrated at a few other locations this year and they are Marina Barrage, Jurong Lake, Punggol, Yishun and Geylang. By bringing people closer to our waters, PUB hopes to build an appreciation for water, which will prove instrumental in encouraging the people of Singapore to conserve and value this precious resource. Hence, this year, they are using the theme  Water and Energy .

Earthlink NTU, being the only environmental club in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) since 1993, has been promoting environmentalism among all staff and students of NTU. This year, Earthlink NTU has been privileged to be invited for this event and will be organizing 3 station games as well as in charge of a booth. Meanwhile, for the aspect of water pollution, a short quiz has been prepared in one of the stations for the engagement of the visitors. There will be a total of 5 MCQs for the visitor to answer. Upon his/her successful completion, he/she will be given a token which will be collected to claim goodie bags. Visitors are required to participate and win in all three station games to claim the goodie bags. It is hoped that this activity will allow the visitors to reflect on the importance of having good water quality in Singapore.

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Earthlink NTU is honoured to present Greenfest Envisage 2014 targeted at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) community-at-large.

In line with the goal of the incumbent Earthlink NTU president, Jin Zhanhe Ryan, the organization is gearing up to have a greater impact on the NTU community. Greenfest 2014 is a new franchise not only built upon the former Environmental Awareness Campaign (EAC), aiming to express novel ideas with the focus on individual action.

The word  Greenfest is a portmanteau of the words  Green and  Fest(-ival) which indicates the environmental aspects of the activity and the festive and conducive atmosphere at which this will be held and discussed. It will no longer be a one-way mode of raising awareness of environmental issues where Earthlink NTU will give out information to students, but rather will be a two-way means of communicating ideas. Greenfest aims to collect ideas from the public about possible and feasible solutions to solve environmental issues and problems and also targets to promote constructive actions, albeit in the small scale, of the NTU community. The organizers wish to emphasize the importance of individual small actions towards a larger goal.

 Envisage shall be the theme for this year s Greenfest.  Envisage literally means to visualize something in the future  this is congruent to our aim to utilize the event and its booths as a tool to motive people to think about and perform action, even in their own small ways, concerning our environment. We would invite the NTU community to share their sentiments about the future of our environment. It is our main objective to make this event meaningful for all participants so that we can all envisage a better environment for our descendants.

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Date: 29th of March 2014, Saturday
Time: 1400 – 1600
Venue: HDB Jurong East near Chinese Garden MRT
Earth Hour is a worldwide grass-roots movement for the planet organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). It was first started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia when 2.2 million homes and businesses turned their non-essential lights off for one hour as a symbol for their commitment to the planet.
Since then, the event is held worldwide towards the end of March annually. As one of the first open-sourced environmental campaigns, Earth Hour has grown from a symbolic event in one city into a global movement, crowdsourcing actions from individuals, businesses, organisations and governments to generate environmental outcomes.
Earthlink NTU has taken part in Earth Hour for the past years and it has been an important part of our committee. Hence we intend to continue celebrating this world- wide tradition but in a brand-new way which is different from what has been finished in previous years. This year we will organize an outreach programme at South West residential area on 29 March 2014. Prior to the outreach programme, a training workshop will be hosted at NTU for all volunteers of the outreach programme on 22 March 2014.