On the 5th of September, French Tech Singapore and Delivery for Business have organized a panel discussion titled Sustainability for growth. The panellists included:

• Josie Stoker from The Capture https://www.thecapture.club/
• Stefan Phang from Diversey https://diversey.com/en
• Remi Cesaro from Zero Waste City https://zerowastecity.com/
• Vardhan Kapoor from Deliveroo https://deliveroo.com.sg/

The discussion was animated by

• Adele Grosskopf from Deliveroo
• Julien Condamines from CoCreation Lab https://cocreationlab.co/

The panellists were invited to explore the following questions 

• What’s your experience with embracing sustainability in a corporate environment? How do you measure it effectively?
• Can you think of an initiative that failed partially or totally? Why did that happen? How did you take it from there?
• How do you pick and prioritize your battles?

Some of the highlights of the conversation included: 

• Different perspectives on how to drive change in organizations. First of all, Stefan highlighted his philosophy to act first and ask permission after.  On the other hand, Vardhan and Remi consider that the primary reason for driving changes in management teams is the potential cost savings.
• The need to humanize the question of sustainability. Through his long experience, Stefan was able to share insights on how sustainable practices can be used to resolve social issues. For instance, he explained how he recovered the waste soap from hotels in order to create activities and value in poorer areas and communities. 
• The necessity to remember that we are privileged in Singapore and be ready to make a more difficult choice in the future. Remi highlighted the fact that being sustainable requires us not only to make conscious choices on how we consume but also to not be hypocritical. For instance, when we live in Singapore, it is common to fly to go travelling or to visit friends which generates significant amounts of carbon emissions. One way to be true with oneself is to buy carbon credits to offset our personal carbon emissions and basically buy our right to pollute.

Zero Waste City thanks French Tech and Deliveroo for organizing this event and inviting us to share our knowledge and experience how to drive sustainable changes in businesses.