Journey Towards Environmental Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunity.
On 7 July 2010, in the midst of Saving Gaia Green Initiatives by Mediacorp and various green events in conjunction with Earth Day 2010, the CER student club, Energy Oasis, did our part by organizing an environmental care awareness talk for CER/MIE students at Lt 29.
Through the Course Manager, Mr Wong Cho Loo, Energy Oasis invited Mr Howard Shaw, the Executive President of Singapore Environment Council (SEC) for giving an educational talk titled Journey Towards Environmental Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunity.
About 80 CER/MIE students attended the 1 hour talk that took place at Lt 29.
Instead of making it another green talk that aimed to instill the feeling of fear by highlighting the environmental gloom and doom, Mr Howard Shaw skillfully captivated the audience by inspiring them to empower themselves throught the belief that nobody and no effort is too insignificant.
Among some interesting points he raised in the talk are:
1
“Singapore is a small nation that consumes less than 5% of world energy. Therefore, whatever we do, it can’t make a significant impact..”, this pessimistic perception is now challenged by the big splash that Singapore is making through exporting our cutting edge water reclamation and management technology in a Big Way.
2
“Wind power is not feasible in Singapore as the average wind speed is less than 6 m/s..” However, anyone standing by the side of PIE, TPE or ECP surely can feel a much higher wind speed, swirled up by the passing-by vehicles. It is heartening to know that an innovative prototype has been invented by an engineering student in Singapore to harness this special wind power and the prototype is undergoing evaluation by LTA now.
Indeed, it was an inspiring talk. Mr Howards ended the talk by saying that “Two types of person who will firmly believe and advocate environmental sustainability; someone who has seen the worst disaster or someone who has seen the most beautiful scene on earth and I encourage you all to explore and see the most beautiful scene on earth.”
As a token of appreciation to Mr Howard for his sharing, we recycled a silicon wafer and fabricated a little “Green” memento using the solar cell processing technology in our clean room. He was delighted by our little green thought..
By
Management Committee
Energy Oasis
