Follow our dance steps and have fun working out! 1… 2… 3…. Stretch your arms… (Julian Cho)

It was a balmy Sunday morning at scenic Marina Barrage as I made my way to “Heal the Earth 2011”, an eco carnival on 23 January 2011.

As I made my rounds at the carnival, I was humbled by the efforts of the individuals who make healthy living a part of their lifestyle. If you’ve missed the event, it’s not too late yet!

Whether you’re a foodie, a shopaholic or have time to spare, here are some easy ways you can continue to contribute to healing the earth and focus on wellness for 2011.

For Foodies

Veggie Thursday

Give up meat. Go vegetarian on Thursdays! With similar projects going on around the world: Veggie Thursday in Ghent, Meatfree Monday in the UK, Meatless Monday in the US and Meatout Thursday at our local National University of Singapore; our local Veggie Thursday started in September 2010, has garnered support from more than 20 organisations ranging from government to NGOs.

George Jacobs, President of the Vegetarian Society and Natalia Angel both proponents and volunteers of Veggie Thursday tells us why it’s so important to veg out on Thursdays, “There are three big reasons we encourage going vegetarian. First, it’s good for your health. Second, it’s inefficient to eat meat. It takes nearly 10kg of feed to obtain 1kg of meat which is a big waste of resources and a large source of pollution. Thirdly, animals meant for meat are often factory farmed inhumanely.”

Not convinced yet? Drop by the Veggie Thursday website for more reasons, sign of for their newsletter to tips for going veg, recipes and vegetarian friendly restaurant info.

http://www.veggiethursday.org

Vegan & Organic Chinese New Year Goodies

Looking for healthier alternatives to our fat and sugar rich Chinese New Year cookies? At the event, we found some delectable Chinese New Year vegan alternatives. Genesis Vegetarian Health Food Restaurant’s range of organic cookies are vegan – made without eggs, butter or dairy. Try out their tarts and carob cookies (which tastes like chocolate). Chinese New Year goods are only available during the festivities period.

To stock up, visit their shop at 1 Lorong Telok or their website at http://www.genesishealthfood.blogspot.com 

Living Food Workshops

One of the key speakers at the event, energetic and fresh looking Linda Loo is a certified Live Foods chef and yoga instructor. Living food is food that contain enzymes and a method of healthy cooking without use of preservatives, additives, and other harmful chemicals or high heat. She holds regular workshops to teach people to cook delicious live foods, yoga, detox and how to live a healthy lifestyle. Check out her Raw Organic Cacao Madness Workshop which teaches attendees to make various decadent chocolate desserts.

http://www.rawfoodlifestyles.com

For Shoppers

The Sustainable Shop

Satisfy your shopaholic instincts while contributing to society welfare. We met up with a bunch of entrepreneurial Singapore Management University students running a shop selling colourful wallets, bags and umbrellas made of trash from Indonesia. Started as a project by the Community Service arm of SMU, the students went to Ciledug and Ciliwung riverbank in Indonesia to source out sustainable and environmentally friendly products. By buying these wallets made from recycled plastics, you’ll be contributing to the livelihood of the trash pickers and villagers in Indonesia.

The Sustainable Shop is open at SMU’s Community Leadership office. 

Gardening for the very busy

We found some pretty amazing self-sustaining ecospheres on sale at the event. Each delicately beautiful biosphere is a little piece of nature housed in a glass terrarium. These tiny greenhouses can be kept indoors and only need to be watered every 3 to 6 months. What could be more convenient than that?

To get your own piece of nature, visit them at http://www.theplantstory.com 

Green Thumbs

For those who prefer to get their hands dirty and do some real planting, opt for eco-friendly fertilizer made from compost. Greenback lives up to its name of putting green back. The company purchases horticultural waste like grass and tree clippings and turns them into sanitized, environmentally friendly compost which serves as an artificial fertilizer alternative. You may be glad to hear that our public spaces are eco-friendly too as Greenback currently supplies their compost to NParks, Botanic Gardens and Gardens by the Bay. For more info, visit http://www.greenback.com.sg

My PET T-shirt

The Tzu Chi Foundation sells a series of apparel (both for retail and for industrial use) made from recycled PET bottles. Quick dry, environmentally friendly and unbelievably soft, the PET bottle material for their apparel are gathered by volunteers from the Foundation and manufactured by non-profit manufacturers who rechannel their profits back to bettering the welfare of the society. The foundation also channels a portion of their products to disaster relief globally and is an active religious charity organization locally and originates from Taiwan.

http://www.tzuchi.org.sg

 

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Interviews with people who strive to make a difference to society

We managed to grab hold of some socially responsible individuals to find out more about what they do and how they contribute to society and the environment.

Joyce Lye

Co-founder of Kampung Senang Charity and Education Foundation and Eco-Harmony

Joyce runs the Kampung Senang foundation which focuses on providing holistic care to the needy, elderly and sick.

Q. Joyce, tell us about your organization.

A. We have five different centres, an elderly care, a daycare, a training centre that supplies recycled wheelchairs to the needy and a social enterprise arm, Eco-Harmony selling holistic products and organic food to support our other centres. 

Q. In what ways do you support the environment?

A. All our centres offer organic food. We have an organic farm at our elder care centre. There are some cancer affected families in our childcare which means their DNA is predisposed to cancer development. We support them by teaching them early in life to eat organically. We’re also not funded by the government and rely on volunteers.

Q. How can we help contribute to your foundation?

A. We’re always looking for volunteers or donations. On Fridays, we need packers to pack vegetables at our organic farm and on Saturdays, we need help to deliver these vegetables to needy cancer patients in Singapore. We also need farming and event volunteers for our family day outings, volunteers at our mobility aids center to help clean wheelchairs and newsletter volunteers if you’re tech savvy.

Jacqueline Tan

Senior Manager, Centre for Social Responsibility, SMU

Jacqueline runs the community service arm of SMU’s student life office and helps students at SMU take part in community projects and events. 

Q. Can you tell us more about the colourful products we see here?

A. These wallets and bags you see are made from trash picked from the streets of Jakarta. The trash pickers pick these up from neighbourhoods, sell them to the factories who makes them into these end products. Our SMU students work directly with these slum communities so we can help improve their livelihood.

Q. How did SMU students get involved in this project?

A. All SMU students need to complete 80 hours of compulsory community service before they are allowed to graduate. We want to embed in them values of lifelong community service. Through this, the students can experience running their own shop, learn business practices and have direct contact with the beneficiaries and NGOs. We hope that the process can be documented and passed on to the next generation of student volunteers as the first batch graduates.

Q. Where can we get these products? Do you have any shops we can buy them from?

A. Right now no. Two months ago, in October 2010, we had a temporary shop at SMU. Now you can get them from our office or contact us via email.

Lorne Chew Jin Tien

Organiser, Heal the Earth 2011

Lorne is the main organizer for Heal the Earth 2011. He is also one of the partners for Greentree Packaging, an eco-friendly company that supplies disposable flatware and cutlery made from corn and other biodegradable materials.

Q: Could you tell us what started your involvement in the environment?

A: It’s a long story. I was in the petro-chemical industry for nearly 10 years. For the first 7 years, I was in charge of doing PVC, PP, and PET resin. In the last 3 years, I was transferred to the Styrofoam line where I saw how Styrofoam which is basically made from styrene and benzene was made.

The process of making Styrofoam requires crude oil extracts, use of HCFCs and tonnes of water. This waste water goes into the river, into the sea, totally untreated and the process of making Styrofoam emits a lot of greenhouse gases causing water and air pollution. At the end of the life cycle of this product, incineration releases harmful gases. If you dump it at a landfill site, it will take hundreds of years for it to break down and even then the petro-chemicals are absorbed into the earth and waters. It’s a whole vicious cycle.

Knowing the ills and harms of all these petrochemicals, I realized that this company doesn’t need another operations manager like me, so I resigned to search for an alternative to Styrofoam in food related packaging. After much R&D and some hard knocks, we found out that we can actually use the biomass of palm, the waste of wheat and sugarcane to make all the replacements of what we can find in the market right now.

Knowing that, I thought we could bring it back to Singapore. We talked to a few of the big boys in the whole chain, and they said, I will likely see 2 results.

1)      A dilution of market share

2)      A loss of profit margin because this packaging is a few cents more, which translates into tens of thousands each month if bought in bulk. 

Q: Why a Heal the Earth event?

A: Europe and the US have banned Styrofoam use (in food packaging) a long time ago. Even in this part of the world, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, even Penang and soon Selangor has banned Styrofoam use. For Singapore, to call ourselves no.1 in almost everything, when it comes to green initiatives, we’re nowhere near these countries.

Many think that Singapore is a clean city, but Singaporeans are way too comfortable in their own comfort zone. At night, when we’re sleeping, workers are there to clean. Even the Singapore and Kallang river requires bumboats to make trips twice a day to clean up the river. If we have this mentality, in the next 5 to 10 years, things will remain the same.

Something needs to be done now. So I talked to corporations, NGOs and government agencies. Most of them said “Lorne, I can’t because …” of various reasons. Finally I talked to my partner, and said why don’t we tighten our belts and get all these people together to see if we can make a difference.

Together with about $120,000 of funds, we decided to pull together this event.

Q. What are your main objectives for this event?

A. What I want to achieve is firstly, to identify the organizations and people who have a heart for a good cause for our future generation. Secondly, to bring across the bigger message that Mother earth is very sick and we can’t stand by.

Q. Did you fulfill your objectives?

A. I’ve meet some people with big hearts and who is willing to help make a difference. For example, the people at Tzu Chi Foundation have been great in their charitable activities and pro-activeness. SG Cares is another partner. They provided 661 volunteers some from schools, taking the initiative to run the event. Singapore International Foundation has also been very helpful in publicizing this event and the things they do for the society.

But, I’ve also seen the ugly side of people who is all about the money. It’ll be hard to get them to do anything.

Q. How about your second objective?

A. As to whether this message has been pushed across to the people, we had 5,862 on paper recorded for the human logo event. While it falls short, this our first year and we have met more than half of our target of 10,000 people so I’m not discouraged. Maybe for our next event at the end of the year or next year, we will achieve our target.

Q. You mentioned that you and your partners brought this together, you’re not funded by any sponsors?

A. No, we’re not trying to sell anything and we’re not funded by anyone. We’re not making any money out of this either. In fact, Greentree’s revenue comes mostly from Europe and we use the profits to fund local projects.

All the prizes and items you see are donated by our sponsors but we didn’t get any money from them. We just hope that through this event, Singaporeans will learn to cut down on petroleum based products, change our diet to be more vegan-friendly and help to heal mother earth.

 Q. How long did you take to organise Heal the Earth 2011?

A. Surprisingly we did everything in three months. We heard that sometimes organisations take one year to plan events of this magnitude.

Q. At the event there was a 10 cent pledge initiative. Can you tell us more about it?

A. We’re soliciting personal commitments from individuals to pledge to spend 10 cents more to shift to a vegan diet, or stop using plastic bags, basically to live a more socially responsible lifestyle. Today, we’ve got about 2000 responses and most of them are under the age of 40 years.

Q. There were quite a few schools who participated in this event. Do you reach out to them for other activities?

A. We engage local schools to spread the message that mother earth is sick. But we don’t sell any of our products as we don’t want people to think we’re there to sell.

Recently, we got a call from a student leader from Victoria Junior College. The student leader found out about us at an event and asked to know more about our products. Soon after the teacher-in-charge called and they’re going to be the first school to ban Styrofoam as takeaway boxes!

Q. What should Singaporeans do next?

A. Cut down on petroleum based products. Change our diets, become vegan friendly and help to heal mother earth.