Don’t ever let Howard Shaw catch you drinking with a straw. No one in his office on the NUS Law School’s Bukit Timah campus is allowed to use one.

“It’s a totally unnecessary piece of plastic,” says the executive director of the Singapore Environment Council (SEC), “and this republic incinerates five million [straws] every month.”

An independently funded, non-government organisation, the council’s mission is to “educate, inspire and assist individuals, business organisations and environmental groups to care for and protect the environment”.

And 30-something Howard, who has been with SEC since it started 15 years ago, walks the green talk.

“At home, my family has a drum that composts vegetable and fruit waste, and all our taps are fitted with thimbles. In the shower, we collect water as it runs while heating up,” he says.

"The run-off is used to water plants, and to flush the toilets, and we don’t fill the kettle [all the way] when making a cup of tea. We only turn on air-conditioning at night when we sleep."

The compost, used as fertiliser for the garden, has made a difference to the flowering trees, grass and bushes which are thriving despite the thin soil.

“Singapore’s soil is not very fertile, but our garden city can really gain from the waste from [leftover] food that used to go to pig farms when we had them. The food can be composted, methane extracted for energy use, and the remainder will make really good organic fertiliser.”

Anyone with a garden should compost their own vegetable waste, he says. “All you need is a tight lid [for a plastic bin] to keep out the pong. [Then] all you have to do is turn the waste with a spade every so often.”

The green dad has occasionally been told off by his two daughters – aged 9 and 11 — for not shutting the door to a room when the air conditioner is on.

“They actively look for the recycling bin whenever we’re out,” he says of them. “It’s much easier to teach children to be green; you just tell them.”

The grandson of RunMe Shaw, who co-founded the Shaw movie empire in Hong Kong and Singapore with his brother Sir Run Run, Howard graduated in 1995 from Oxford Brookes University in England. He studied environmental biology and business administration because he “anticipated there would be a strong demand for waste management”.

Given his upbringing, it was perhaps a natural decision. “As a child, when I was living in Kowloon, Hong Kong [in the Shaw mansion in Clearwater Bay], my parents took me out to the hills of Kowloon and the New Territories.

“My parents are naturally quite green, although my father likes powerful cars. I have managed to introduce three Priuses [hybrid cars] into my family. One even replaced my father’s Ferrari.”

For his home, Howard seeks out pest-control companies that use ecologically sound methods such as lime or vinegar to deal with termites, instead of those that pump arsenic into the ground.

“We do not use thermal fogging to deal with mosquitoes because that kills off other insects as well,” he adds.

Singapore’s “greenness” has evolved, he states. “Forty-five years ago, we faced serious issues with water. Now we have two more ‘taps’ besides Johor and rainwater — New Water and desalination.

“In energy, we used to rely only on fuel oil, with its sulphur output. Now we use natural gas from Malaysia and Indonesia, and are planning on getting LNG [liquid natural gas] as well.”

Of nuclear energy, an alternative source that Singapore is exploring, he says: “There are enough checks and balances that make it safe. [Besides] nuclear technology will help us straddle the gap to a point in time when renewable energy is up and running.

“Then there is bio-fuel. If I were an architect, I’d seriously employ solar and wind energy in my designs.”

Of Singapore’s carbon footprint ranked 24 worldwide (Qatar has the largest at number one), he says: “We provide a lot of services to the world. We’re also a travel and maritime hub and have one of the largest and most efficient oil refineries in the world [Pulau Bukom].

“So you cannot compare our per capita carbon emissions [at 12 tonnes] with that of Malaysia’s  7.3 tonnes.”

For him, transport and the “overconsumption, especially of disposables” are two aspects of life here that needs changing, and he draws attention to the fact that travelling to work in the morning, “almost everyone is in their cars alone”.  His personal rule for most disposables? “Use everything twice.”

The richest woman in China - Zhang Yin, who is said to have amassed US$3.4 billion - is in the waste management industry.

Join us at Earth Hour Singapore 2011 - Official celebration party
Venue: The Promontory @ Marina Bay
MRT: Raffles Place exit J
Date: Saturday, 26 March 2011
Time: 5.30 – 10.00 pm
Click here for more info

Text by By Mary Lee. This article first appeared in the January-March 2011 issue of Singapore Magazine.