On Friday, 7 October 2016, it was a meaningful night at the SBS lobby where student leaders from more than 100 clubs in NTU gathered to bid farewell to the outgoing management committees, and at same time welcoming in the new batch of leaders. The event was a collaboration between Earthlink NTU and NTU Student Affairs Office (SAO) to promote the “Ditch Da Disposables” (DDD) initiative during Student Leaders Night. DDD is an Earthlink NTU’s initiative that was started in 2014. It aims to reduce waste by reducing the usage of disposables. In a span of 2 years, the DDD initiative has successfully reduced more than 2000 sets of disposables during Earthlink events. This achievement motivated us to bring it to the next level by promoting DDD to every other clubs in NTU.
Disposable plates and cutleries were not provided for the event so as to be in line with the “DDD” initiative. Hence, Earthlink NTU started the event with sales of reusable containers and cutleries to cater for student leaders who did not bring their reusable containers. During the event, Earthlink’s student ambassadors also encouraged attendees to adopt the habit of using reusable containers. They shared with the attendees about the impact of disposables on the environment, and suggested methods to reduce these impacts such as adopting the BYOC (Bring Your Own Container) and BYOB (Bring Your Own Bag) initiatives.
The president of Earthlink NTU, Ms. Wong Zhi Sian, gave a passionate opening speech to officially kick-start the event. She explained to more than 900 fellow student leaders and guests about the importance of reducing disposables and also the DDD initiative. Ms. Wong explained that there are 200 thousand tonnes of waste going to Singapore’s landfill annually, and disposables contributes most significantly. Subsequently in his keynote address to the student leaders, Associate Provost (Student Life) Prof. Kwok Kian Woon voiced his appreciation for Earthlink’s initiative which aligns well with NTU’s effort to make NTU the world’s greenest campus.
During the networking session, student ambassadors from Earthlink NTU ardently approached student leaders from different clubs to introduce the DDD initiative. To bring the DDD initiative to a whole new level, our student ambassadors also invited the student leaders to join the DDD Alliance. Many clubs signed up for the DDD Alliance and agreed that they will try adopt the DDD initiative in their own club’s events. We have successfully recruited representatives from 45 clubs to join the DDD alliance through this event. By going straight to the student leaders, we hope to reach out to more students in NTU and convince them to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle.
Although not all the attendees brought their own containers, we believe that a great step has been made towards a greener NTU community as it was the first time in NTU that an event of such a large scale did not provide disposables. More importantly, that night marks the first time many of the participants brought their own containers and we hope they continue to do so and implement the DDD initiative into their student clubs to create a more environmental friendly university culture.