Sustainable design key to Singapore's green transition

Can Singapore, with just 1 per cent of its land area set aside for farming, achieve its target of producing 30 per cent of its nutritional needs by 2030?

Constraints and obstacles will be plenty as the resource-scarce Republic moves to reduce its carbon footprint, but a "systems-level" approach can help overcome them, said Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu.

Designating Lim Chu Kang as a high-tech food zone, for instance, enables the production of food to be designed in a manner that is sustainable and resource efficient, she said.

Circular economy principles can also be employed by different industries in the vicinity.

"For example, soup stock can be made from fish trimmings, while the organic waste of poultry farms can be valorised as fertilisers for the vegetable farms," Ms Fu said.

She was speaking at the Design Innovation Forum, organised by the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in partnership with The Straits Times, held yesterday at the university.

In line with the theme of the event, A More Sustainable And Happier World By Design, the minister touched on different ways in which products and processes could be designed to improve sustainability.

Sustainably designed products would reduce waste in production, encourage the right consumer behaviour and enable end-of-life recycling.

Ms Fu cited how the exhibition panels used in SUTD's open house were made entirely of recycled materials that can be assembled, stacked and stored without any glue or fastener, and easily recycled.

"I was delighted to learn that for SUTD's open house, the exhibition panels are made entirely from recyclables, and are designed to minimise waste from fabrication."

Another way to boost sustainability would be to design processes that reuse materials that are already available. Ms Fu highlighted Tuas Nexus, an integrated waste treatment facility that will encompass a water reclamation plant, a material sorting and recovery plant, and an anaerobic facility that turns a mix of food waste and water sludge into biogas.

Conventionally, wastewater is treated only for water reclamation, with sludge from this process disposed of at the landfill on Pulau Semakau without extraction of any biogas energy.

At the Tuas facility, which will be completed in phases from 2025, not only is the biogas harnessed to power the wastewater facility, but the process of mixing the food waste also trebles the yield of this renewable energy source.

"Process redesign enables us to optimise resources and carbon footprint and turn our scarcity into a competitive advantage," said Ms Fu.

The Singapore Green Plan needs an all-of-society effort, she added.

"Our sustainability blueprint is a work in progress, to be designed, to be innovated. We need innovation in products, processes, systems and our society. It is up to the humanist, scientist and artist within us to make our vision for a better future a reality."