In June 21, two months after the Blissful Life Talk in UMC Singapore, Tzu Chi volunteers once again visited its premises for a talk on Environmental Awareness. The talk is aimed to increase awareness on environment protection ideology and practical measures. Besides its senior management staff and employees, UMC also invited their suppliers and contractors to the talk. Sharing environmental issues statistics, real examples on recycling measures on corporate level; 60 attendees from UMC have gained much insight on the topic concern.

Two months after the Blissful Life Talk in UMC Singapore, Tzu Chi volunteers once again visited its premises for a talk on Environmental Awareness.

Sister Jingia sharing her past experiences in exercising corporate environmental friendly measures. The US$10 million deal secured to her company simply testifies to the saying that “A kind thought could yield many kindness harvests”.

The green practices presented by the members of the Entrepreneurs Association who already practicing them in their business premises, coupled with several quantitative data, brought quite some pondering moments to the 60 attendees.

Mr Harrison Ku from the ESH Management committee earnestly hoped that the talk would ring a bell to everyone to begin recycling from individual, homes, up to the workplace.

Shrink-wrapped in a layer of clear plastic cover, was a matt golden brown paper box, within it, there was 12 small boxes lying neatly inside.  But before you could take a bite on the pineapple tart, there is yet another layer of plastic which individually wrapped up each tart.

In Singapore, over packaging of products has produced 100kg of domestic waste disposal per year per head. Besides plastic bags, paper boxes, plastic bottles, glass bottles, drink packages etc make up to an astonishing high of 35% of domestic garbage.

Apart from educating the public to reduce, recycle and reuse any resources, the National Environment Agency (NEA) has taken measures to encourage manufacturers, importers and distributors to work together to reduce packaging from the upstream of production.

The NEA has signed the first Singapore Packaging Agreement with five food and beverage (F&B) industry associations (representing about 500 companies), four public-waste collectors and two environmental groups.

The Agreement is for 5-year period and it is voluntary, as it would provide flexibility for the industry to adopt cost-effective solutions to reduce waste through the redesign of packaging of products and/or using packaging materials that can be recycled. This is to strive for the realization of 60% packaging recyclable rate by 2012 set by the government.

A rose bestowed, its fragrance yet remains

“While researching on environmental friendly packaging materials, the key consideration is not just the cost. More importantly is whether we are overdrawing the resources from our next generation?”

Owner of a trading company, Sister Jingia is also a member of Tzu Chi Entrepreneurs Association.  More than 10 years ago, she had noticed that many labor intensive industries in the south-east coastal region of Taiwan encouraged their employees to continuously produce product design drafting and prototypes as a form of training.

“These prototypes are far from perfect; I don’t understand why they do not take effort to refine the design before making the prototype? This repetitive process of design drafting and making of prototype in fact is a waste of manpower, materials and man-hour.” Sister Jingia commented that proper marketing research and annual strategic planning of product initiatives should be the way.

Weighing the importance of material gain and depletion of resources, Sister Jingia decided that she should adopt the “minus” approach in her thinking.  Keeping the thinking of “not squander when one has plenty” in mind, this simple thought has not only broaden her vision, but also widely recognized by her clienteles in America.

“At that time, Polyfoam was already banned in Europe, but there was no legislation on this in the U.S.  Over 10 million container loads of goods were shipped from China to the U.S. each year.  The packaging materials were then discarded as garbage.  I was very worry for them.”

After sought agreement with her business partner, which is also her husband, she decided to stop using Polyfoam which is harmful to the environment as packaging materials. “We started to put effort into researching and planning of packaging materials which are environmental friendly. ‘Doing business in another country, why do we care to be thoughtful for others?’, to my American clienteles, this is unimaginable!”

“This is not really about being thoughtful for others or myself; since we are living in the same planet, no matter where you are, it is still the same one Earth!” Touched by her thoughtfulness, an US$10 million consignment was in her hand.

A tug of war

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, has taken 3/5 of his estate to put into charity use in a period of 6 years.  In an interview by the Fortune magazine in year 2002, he said, “Well, when you have the resources that could make a very big impact, you can't just say to yourself, ‘O.K., when I’m 60, I’ll get around to that. Stand by.’”

Environmental issue has no time to waste; two members of the Tzu Chi Entrepreneurs Association, Sister Teo Siew Leng and Brother Allan Soh do not just sit and wait.

Running a laundry service, Sister Siew Leng spearheaded a recycling move in her factory.  After one year of execution, she has gained much recognition and cooperation from her employees.

Besides collecting recyclable items, Brother Allan Soh has also started to plant more trees and built more ponds to collect rain waters for irrigation of the plants in his Golf resort.

“We destroy our Earth; we are responsible to help our Mother Earth to recover from the destruction.” Sister Siew Leng said.

“It is better to leave our children a clean planet rather then giving them a lot of money.” This is what Brother Allan has in his mind.

In the decaying era of the planet, kindness and evil thoughts are in a tug of war. To cherish kindness and do good deeds would counter act the effect of evil thoughts.

Sister Jingia, being one of the main speakers, pointed out that “Environment protection effort in the corporate world is not just about how much has been collected and recycled; it is a matter of shared value, the cohesiveness within the organization. Besides business results, what’s more important is the sense to achieve a higher level of mission.”

Green practice, top to toe

According to the evaluations, in UMC, the major material used in manufacturing wafer fabs is water, followed by air, coal and crude oil. Water and energy consumption cause the most impact to the environment, followed by the emission of greenhouse gases.

“In UMC, we have taken seriously on the environment protection and practical measures, especially on recycling.  We have set up many collection points to recycle papers, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and special treatment for used batteries.”

Mr Harrison Ku, a Principal Engineer in UMC, said, “We conduct product raw materials checking annually, working on how to reduce, recovery and recycle of the materials. Our challenge is that there are limited waste treatment and management companies in Singapore, we are talking to other companies hoping to expand the recycling structure and market, so that the recycling collectible process could become broader and run smoother, achieving our aim of recovery and reduce of materials used.”

Directly reporting to the Director’s office, Mr Ku is responsible in the development of the directional strategy of the Environmental, Industrial Safety and Health Management (ESH Management) of the company, planning education program to promote and enhance the knowledge and learning of the ideology on environment protection to the staff. “We hope that this talk would inspire everybody to start recycling from individual, homes, up to the workplace. We hope to join effort with Tzu Chi to highlight the importance of environmental protection.”

Mr Tan Hwa Nan, the Division Director to Facilities Operation & Construction Division added, “We hope to disseminate the message of environmental responsibilities to more people.  Therefore, we have invited our suppliers and contractors to attend the talk and encourage them to work with us in this aspect.”

To drain the pond to get all the fish? Or to go for sustainable development?

Few members of the Tzu Chi Entrepreneurs Association took time off from work for the day’s presentations.  Mr Yan Bo Wen, Vice President of UMC Singapore, gave much praises to them.  Mr Yan sat through the talk, setting a good example to his staff.  He expressed that his 1500 employees are potential manpower in recycling efforts; while the Tzu Chi Recycling station nearby is a place to nurture future “gardeners of the Mother Earth.”

Ms Wu Jingjing is an attendee of the talk; she is a staff of the ESH management committee. Came from Malacca, she had visited Tzu Chi Malacca branch office in the past and was quite familiar with Tzu Chi’s environmental protection endeavors.  Relating to the talk presentation, she said, “Presenting quantitative data such as recycling 50 kg of paper could save one 20 years old tree is really much effective in increasing public awareness on the topic.”

On her thought on the scientific predictions that “the earth will be destroyed in year 2013”, Ms Wu said; “If we continue the way we live today, I believe it will come true.”

The author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed? - Mr Jared Diamond, wrote in his book, “Lessons learned from the Maya ruins and Easter Island had clearly manifested that there are five factors leading to the collapse of environment.  Out of the five, the four major ones were environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and loss of trading partners.  To some societies, these four factors may not seem that important, but the fifth factor certainly is the key to success or failure – the society’s own responses to its environmental problems.”

“How would the world be tomorrow?” It’s a big question indeed. The answer, perhaps, was already indicated in the subtitle of the book itself – Making the wise choice.