Zero Waste City was featured in the 19th June 2020 article of Eco-Business (the Asia Pacific’s leading media organisation on sustainable development). In this article, Eco-Business explores way for businesses to mitigate the challenges ahead from the global economic downturn linked to the Covid-19 pandemic.
You can access the full article here: https://www.eco-business.com/news/how-to-build-back-better-8-ways-sustainable-businesses-can-survive-in-the-post-covid-era/
Extracts from the article
Sort trash
Remote working will reduce the amount of waste a company generates, and sorting trash will help drive the local circular economy for used materials—and save money in the process. Though it varies by sector, waste management consumes about 4 per cent of a company’s total turnover, including the value of unused resources. Even in Singapore, where the recycling rate is low, businesses that segregate and recycle their trash make savings compared to companies that don’t, said Remi Cesaro, director of consultancy Zero Waste City. Shopping malls, for instance, which produce between 500-2000 tonnes of trash a year, can save 60 of the cost of waste collection by segregating their waste.
Sort trash
The big-three sources of building energy consumption are lighting, IT and cooling. To reduce energy use from lighting, switch to LED right away, said Cesaro. To fix computing is mostly about user behaviour. Encourage staff to use energy-saving devices like screen-savers, and power down their machines when they’re not in use.
The big one is cooling, the single largest consumer of building energy in the tropics. Cutting cooling energy consumption, Cesaro explained, requires dilligent maintainence—an inefficiently run HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning] system can add 20 per cent to the energy consumption total. Adding a predictive analysis tool to the system, which predicts when the efficiency of the chiller will change, can add 2-5 per cent savings, he said.
Professor Lee Poh Seng, deputy director of the Centre for Energy Research & Technology at the National University of Singapore, said that as offices won’t be full, companies need to adjust the settings of their cooling systems. Firms moving into new offices should consider less energy-intensive solutions such as chilled beams or passive displacement ventilation systems—which also minimise infection risk—he said.