The NTU Human-Wildlife Coexistence Team is Recruiting & Accepting Community Feedbacks /Ideas!

Join us in our efforts to protect our campus wildlife by applying to the NTU HWC Team or leaving your ideas and feedback with us at https://tinyurl.com/ntuhwc21.

For further queries, please email the NTU Biodiversity Week team at earthlink-nbd@e.ntu.edu.sg. The NTU Biodiversity Week is an annual event which seeks to spread awareness and inspire action amongst members of the NTU community, in support of biodiversity conservation and animal welfare causes. The event will be held in March 2022. Please also fill in the NTU Wildlife Perception Survey (https://tinyurl.com/wildntusurvey21) if you have not done so, as your responses will help shape next year’s event. We hope to see you there!

Article by: Cheryl Yeoh

Visuals by: Cheah Song Cheng

Hey there folks! Since the start of the semester, the various committees in Earthlink have been grinding their days to prepare a series of events just for our fellow students. Every year, the highly anticipated NTU Welcome Week kick starts the academic year. With this year being no exception, Earthlink and all the other Co-Curricular Activities (CCAs) in NTU set up virtual booths to introduce our clubs to the incoming students.

A virtual booth was thus set up in the school portal as a mode of communication between Earthlink and the new students should they wish to inquire more about us. Different chat rooms were initiated and both directors and deputy directors from each portfolio were readily available to engage with the freshmen and existing students. Frequently asked questions centered on the commitment level required from the individual, the types of available roles in each portfolio, the relevant skills required and what kind of events they will be looking forward to in the semester. Following the Welcome Week, a Welcome Tea session was hosted on 16 August. The executive committee introduced the various committee and past events held and Directors of each portfolio were invited to introduce themselves while revealing their upcoming plans, such as the types of event lined up for the semester to the audience.

Next, through the casting of votes by the members, an Annual General Meeting was held on 20th August to affirm the formation of the 29th Management Committee for the year, and Earthlink is deeply grateful for all the support received. After the formation of a staunch committee, the Subcommittee Recruitment Drive commenced where freshly scouted as well as interested members were recruited to be assimilated into the family!

Finally, the Extraordinary General Meeting was held on 10th September. This event grants the various specialised portfolios an opportunity to interact and engage with the newly formed subcommittees, as well as introducing the shiny new advisory board of the year! The new members of the advisory board were invited to share their reasons for the formation of this board and their future aspirations in support of Earthlink. The meeting ended with the subcommittee bonding session which includes members of each portfolio to share their opinions and throw out fresh ideas so as to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s interests and the direction they hope to work towards during their time in the respective portfolios.

Stay tuned for more updates on events concerning Earthlink and keep us on your mind as more is to be anticipated! Membership application is still open, therefore if you ever find yourself curious regarding what Earthlink does and want to be part of our family, do not hesitate to join us!

Article by: Cheryl Yeoh

Visuals by: Lau Hiu Naam

Singapore has always been both an exemplary leader as well as a follower of many things which make us versatile and resilient to changes. Our nation’s annually celebrated National Day Parade (NDP) includes exciting performances and the distribution of NDP packs to the citizens. These NDP packs often come in a plastic tote bag filled with handy items such as bottled water, a musical instrument, hand-held fan, ponchos, etc. In 2019, approximately 250,000 NDP packs were distributed and many of the items ended up in the bin after the event. Thus, it had generated a lot of waste. As a result, this year’s NDP organisers had taken extra consideration towards making the parade as environmentally sustainable as possible by joining hands with green groups.

Since December 2020, the NDP Executive Committee has consulted and discussed with 15 green groups regarding the type of materials to be used to produce this year’s NDP packs. The focal idea is to produce items that are of durable quality and environmentally friendly. NTU Earthlink President and third-year materials science and engineering student, Tan Shi Zhou, concurs with this and has contributed to the choice of material used. “Tyvek is a synthetic polymer that is highly recyclable and commonly recycled alongside plastic bottles. It also boasts a high strength-to-density ratio, which means that the material is strong, highly durable and resistant to solvents, wear & tear, while at the same time, lightweight,” remarked Shi Zhou. These factors thus position DuPont Tyvek as a suitable choice for the material used for the NDP pack as it provides a good balance of strength, durability, and resistivity to the environment. All of which are essential for the bag to be long-lasting, the lightweight and opaqueness of the bag also ensures that the bag is easy to carry around without much hassle. When asked if there is something he hopes to change in the process of preparing for NDP next year, he enthusiastically quipped, “I hope to be able to work with the NDP EXCO to procure an even more environmentally sustainable and natural material beyond the synthetic polymer that we used this year. I hope that sustainability will continue becoming the main focus in the upcoming editions of the NDP!”

“I do hope that we can remain resilient amidst the climate issues and move towards a truly sustainable Singapore.”

-Tan Shi Zhou

As Singapore continues to move towards a zero-waste nation, matters on minimising food wastage is another goal to work towards. NTU Earthlink Vice-President and third-year environmental science undergraduate, Shawn Ang, shares this sentiment fervently. He chimed in, “To reduce food waste, the NDP Exco also ensured that food indents/catering was just right to the number of participants present, to avoid any unnecessary catering and food wastage. In the one or two unavoidable scenarios where excess food was catered, they partnered with SG Food Rescue to offload the edible food to prevent any wastage.” Feeling zealous, Shawn realises more needs to be done with this eco-consciousness by transiting to the power of narration where he believes “stories and messages are powerful agents of change”.

“The only way to do that is to first outreach and educate Singaporeans about what these issues are, because they can’t care about or take action on something they don’t know about in the first place.”

Shawn Ang

All in all, Singapore is proficient in many areas, but climate change requires a collective effort globally. It is a conundrum that needs extra care and consideration and a common understanding in the pursuit of a sustainable future. As echoed by both Shi Zhou and Shawn, “The only way to do that is to first outreach and educate citizens about what these issues are, because they can’t care about or take action on something they don’t know about in the first place.” Hence, a wake-up call is needed, particularly in the mainstream education curricula where green habits are to be inculcated at a young age both in our own households and at the school level.

One of our NTU2020 goals is to reduce waste production by 35%.

To be precise, we’re looking at per-capita waste intensity with the baseline set on 2011’s figures. And we’re making good progress: as of 2015, we’ve reduced waste production by 21%!
To reach our goal of 35% waste reduction, we will need each and every one of our 40,000 strong population of students, staff and professors to contribute towards our goal of being the Greenest Campus in the World!
Earthlink will link you up with all the prerequisite knowledge to do so! 😀

Just bin it

There are bins on campus that collects:

• paper/plastic/cans,
• e-waste,
• food,
• ink cartridges,
• pens

Click on each of the links here to be brought to the relevant sections! 🙂
Also, we have our bi-annual Recycling Drive every semester! Right after finals, we will be going door-to-door around the Halls of Residence to collect your recyclables 🙂
Do remember that recycling bins are only for recyclables 🙁 If you see anyone disposing food waste into the recycling bins, please help us to remind them that they should be disposed in general waste bins only! Not only will that waste everyone’s efforts, it poses a genuine threat to our health too as the big recycling bins are cleared less frequently!

Paper, Plastic and Cans

There are bins EVERYWHERE 😀

• Generally, they can be found at the level 1 and 2 entrances of every North Spine and South Spine block.
• Many of them are situated next to lift doors too! 🙂

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Electronic waste

Starhub RENEW E-waste bins can be found in 4 locations in NTU campus:

• Between LT1A and McDonald’s (next to stairs leading up to North Spine Food Court/Canteen A)
• Outside CEE (N1), Level 1
• Outside EEE (S1), Level B2
• Opposite Co-op cafe @ The Hive, Level B5

In NIE campus, RENEW bin can be found at U.iD NIE Student Hub (Student Services Centre).

There are some RENEW bins in the Nanyang Heights blocks too!
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Foodbank NTU

Have too much excess food from CNY or pre-finals welfare packs? Do place them in the Food Bank bins at the following locations:

• One Stop @ SAC
• The Hive
• Hall 9 Canteen
• Hall 12 function room

All types of non-perishable food items that are unopened, unused, and with at least 4 weeks of shelf life are accepted.

Do visit the Food Bank website for pictures of the locations and to learn more about the food bank initiative! 🙂
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Ink Cartridges

If you have any ink cartridges or toners, don’t throw them into the general waste bins! Instead, bring them over to the Student Services Center where there is a Ink Cartridge bin right opposite the lift that is on the left of Subway! 🙂
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Pens

Image by “Save That Pen”

In collaboration with Save That Pen (STP), we have 2 STP bins located at the end of both spines! The one at the North Spine is right outside LWN Library, and the one at South Spine is outside LKC LT!
Do drops your used pens that have served you well into the bins once they’re out of ink! 🙂
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Earthlink NTU is fortunate to be given an opportunity to visit the Senoko WTE Plant, made possible through the National Environmental Agency (NEA). We are thankful to be hosted by a friendly and informative installation officer, Max Heng at Senoko WTE Plant. Max shared with us about the processes that lie behind the incineration of waste, which will be in the article content.
The first stop of Earthlink’s Recycling Portfolio Waste Trail Journey: Senoko Waste-to-Energy Incineration plant.

What is your impression of a rubbish incineration plant? Black smoke in the air, foul smell stinking up the air or suffocating pollution? Surprisingly not! Take a journey with us into the Senoko Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Plant.
Senoko WTE plant sits tucked away in the northern tip of Singapore, right above Woodlands. Apart from the festive looking, 150m-tall twin chimneys, it looks quite ordinary. To the lay person, no one would suspect this to be one of the four centers for Singapore’s rubbish. Its identity is betrayed only by the frequent arrivals of refuse disposal trucks, and the ever-so-slight odor of rubbish.

Senoko and Singapore’s waste management

Senoko WTE is also the only waste incineration facility located outside of the Tuas area (west of Singapore). It is positioned to serve the eastern, northern and central areas of the country – no small burden for the plant. It receives 500-600 refuse trucks and incinerates close to 25% of the 10000 tons of rubbish Singapore produces a day.
The incineration operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It simply cannot afford a day off. In fact, all 4 incineration plants in Singapore currently operate at high capacity to manage the refuse generated daily. This load will be shared by the upcoming waste-to-energy plant built by a Hyflux and Mitsubishi consortium, expected to be complete by 2019.

Do we burn… everything?

Because of Singapore’s land scarcity, most of our rubbish is incinerated. But not all rubbish is incinerable. Bulky objects will choke the hoppers (passageways for trash to be thrown into the furnace). They have to be broken down into smaller pieces before being sent to the plant. As such, they have to be collected separate from normal rubbish. Other non-incinerable objects like hazardous wastes or flammables are handled by special facilities suited to dispose of such wastes.
As a form of deterrence, 30 to 50 refuse trucks that enter SWTE are randomly stopped and painstakingly inspected for non-incinerables everyday. The selected trucks unload their trash onto the ground, and workers are deployed to inspect the trash before transferring the trash into the refuse bunker. Trucks with incinerables in them are sent back to the public waste collectors, for them to dispose of appropriately.

The incineration process: how it works

With non-incinerables aside, let’s get down to the real work the SWTE does.
Refuse trucks unload its trash into the refuse bunker, a 5-storey deep refuse storage. The bunker’s air is kept below atmospheric pressure, preventing refuse odors from escaping into the environment. A grab crane (or ‘the claw’) in the bunker then transferred the rubbish into the incinerator, lifting up to 5 tons of load per grab.

In the incinerator, the refuse is dropped onto a slanted platform known as the incineration grates which spreads out the refuse and evenly mix it with air, leading to complete combustion of the trash. The incinerator operates at an optimal temperature of 1000 degree Celsius, which is deemed as the temperature that will produce the least gas pollutants. The waste would end up as ashes, and will then be drop into a storage below the incinerator.
Flue gas (gaseous, often toxic, by-products) of the incineration process will go through an advanced flue gas cleaning system to remove dust and neutralize pollutants from the flue gas before it is released into the atmosphere via tall chimneys. Flue gases emitted are monitored real time and ensure that they meet emission standards set by the National Environment Agency.
The process reduces the volume of our rubbish by 90%, then the ash transferred to our only landfill, off-shore Semakau, to be stored.

Creating Green Energy

But Senoko WTE Plant not only reduces the amount of space our trash occupies, it contributes to green energy as well! The plant converts waste to energy, just as its name suggests. The heat that is released is channeled to the boiler to produce superheated steam. The steam is used to drive turbo-generators to produce electricity.
Senoko WTE Plant is fully self-sustainable, and has no need to burn fuel for electricity. This is because the refuse combusts spontaneously once the temperatures are high enough. It consumes only one fifth of the energy it produces; the rest is fed to the national grid. The surplus energy from SWTE is enough to power 100 000 3-room HDB flats per day! Together with the other 3 waste-to-energy plants, the total surplus energy generated meet between 2 to 3 percent of Singapore’s energy needs. Unlike fossil fuel power stations, WTE plants are unable to control the amount of energy generated; it varies with the type and amount of refuse that is thrown every day.

Going through the trash

While it certainly isn’t a glamourous job, working in Senoko WTE Plant does have its perks. Peer into the refuse bunker, and you can tell a lot about buying habits of the season. Our guide, Max tells us that it’s an amusing sight to spot amidst the rubbish hills durian shells in the middle of the year, Santa and reindeer decors at the end of the year, then huge dragon heads and Chinese New Year decors shortly after.
Senoko WTE doesn’t only burn dirty municipal and industrial waste. One does get a glimpse into the side of fashion industry few are conscious of. New, out of season luxury products are sent to the plant to be destroyed as company representatives look on. This ensures that out-of-season goods are not found at discounted prices which will undercut their business.
There’s more to WTE plants that we know! The trip the Senoko WTE certainly surprised us. Join us for Recycling Committee’s upcoming trips for our Waste Trail Journey and look forward to an insightful and informative time!
Curious about the SWTE? Here are some Frequently Asked Questions!
Q:
Are there days when there is too much rubbish for the plant to incinerate? What happens then?
A:
The rubbish is kept in the refuse bunker for at most few days before its incinerated.
Q:
How do we know how much trash Singapore produces?
A:
Refuse trucks that enter the facility are weighed on a weighbridge before and after they discharge their loads into large refuse bunkers. This weighing process enables the WTE to keep track of the amount of waste disposed of by each vehicle.
Q:
Why is it not smelly in the plant?
A:
The pressure within the refuse bunker is kept below atmospheric pressure, such that the unpleasant smell won’t be able to escape the bunker (air flows from high pressure to low pressure)
Q:
Are the recyclables present among the trash sorted and recycled?
A:
Any recyclables that are thrown into the general waste bin will be transported to similar waste-to-energy plants, where they will be burned to ashes. These precious resources could have been recovered in the Material Recovery Facility and made into new items. So please segregate your rubbish and give your recyclables a second life!
For more information:

• Keppel info
• Brief article on waste management process in Singapore
• A walk through the incineration process

Written by:
Gan En Xin Gladys
Ng Shi Hoe

Ever wondered what happens to your waste once you place them in the bin? Probably not! Singapore’s waste management system runs mostly without a hitch – perhaps too perfectly – and most of us don’t think about what happens after we place our non-recyclable waste into the bin.
Throughout the academic year, Earthlink NTU organizes our Waste Trail Journey that sheds light into the intricate backend process of waste management. If you’ve missed all of them, fret not! Here, we pen down and show you what we have learnt from the trips. 🙂

The Journey

Waste typically ends up in either general waste bins or recycling bins. Those that are in general waste bins are brought directly to the Incineration Plant (IP), while those that are in recycling bins are brought to the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) for sorting and recycling!
It’s obvious that placing your trash in the recycling bins makes more sense, but we can’t just have all our trash sent to the MRF: food waste and chemicals will cause the whole bin of recyclables to be contaminated and unsuitable for recycling! 🙁
Thus, never ever place waste contaminated with food or chemicals into recycling bins! 🙂
Let’s delve a little deeper into each stage!

Stage 1: Materials Recovery Facility

The most magical part of the Waste Trail Journey happens at the MRF! 

From recycling bins, the recyclables are transported to the MRF where they are sorted according to its material, where they will be further processed and eventually used as raw material for another product!

Click here to read more about Earthlink NTU’s trip to the Veolia Material Recovery Facility in 2017! 

Stage 2: Incineration Plant

If you live near an Incineration Plant, you’d be familiar with the gigantic red/white chimney that Santa Claus will have a hard time going through! :p Come join us for our trip to Senoko Incineration Plant! Who knows, we might find Santa stuck inside! 😀
Click here for an article written by our Recycling portfolio in 2016!

Stage 3: Landfill

An island filled with seagrass meadows, coral rubble, coral leaves, hairy crabs, nerite snails, fiddler crabs and sea stars. What is this island called? Yes, it’s Pulau Semakau!
Pulau Semakau is the world’s first-of-its-kind offshore landfill! How do the flora and fauna coexist with the 180 million kg of non-recyclable waste we dispose every year? Come with us to find out more! 😉
Click here for an article written by our Recycling portfolio during their trip in 2017! [under RevAmpS]
Of course, nothing beat the experience of being there in-person so do look out for our annual waste trail journey! Like us on our Facebook page (and set it to ‘see first’) to get informed about any upcoming trips! 😉
Head down to our next part as we tell you how you can contribute more to recycling! [under RevAmpS]