SINGAPORE - North West District has won a regional environmental sustainability award for the second time, for its numerous successful initiatives towards keeping the district "clean, green, and liveable".
It received the Asean Environmentally Sustainable City award from the Asean National Committee at a ceremony in Brunei on Tuesday (Sept 12). It won the same award in 2014.
The award aims to recognise Asean cities, townships or districts that had implemented exemplary initiatives towards environmental sustainability and keeping them clean, green, and liveable.
It is given out every three years for sustainability initiatives sustained or started in the past three years.
The North West Community Development Council's 10-year eco-plan, Green Living @ North West, which aims to encourage the community to assume greater environmental ownership, helped the district to win the award.
Under the plan, there are sustainability programmes like Recycle @ North West, Reduce @ North West, Eco CC @ North West.
With the help of 600 volunteers, the recycling programme has collected more than 376,500kg of sorted, non-contaminated recyclables since 2012 .
The "reduce" programme encourages residents to sign up for an energy and water audit contest to help low-income families defray utilities bills. A total of 12,643 households have pledged their commitment to conserve energy since 2011, translating to at least 220,000 kWh of energy saved. This is enough to power close to 850 three-room flats for a month.
The district's mayor Teo Ho Pin said: "With strong support from our private, public and people partners, green volunteers and residents, the North West District has rolled out more than 80 sustainable programmes to reach out to 745,000 residents under the five pillars of the Eco Plan last year.
"Looking ahead, we will continue to develop innovative programmes to equip residents with green living capabilities and steer them towards greater environmental ownership and resource conservation practices."
A sustainability report was launched in May to summarise the progress made under the eco-plan from 2009 to last year.
The report was the first of its kind produced by a Community Development Council in Singapore. It also measured the initiative's impact on the community and assessed whether future sustainability plans were on-track.
