When the going gets though, the tough gets going

I thought it was really cool when my last visit in China seeing supermarkets stop giving plastic bags to shoppers. The A4 size card board I discarded was disappeared in sight for less then 30 min because someone has pick it up to sell to recyclers. After The Nation has taken in more than a million of immigrants, the society behaviour had the spill over effects. We have an Elderly Chinese lady picking up flyers every morning at the mailboxes for resell. These flyers were usually clean up by the sweepers and dump into our garbage bins. They ended up being burnt into ashes. Our garbage has turn into their gold. They will get 15 cents per kg of papers collected from the buyer and they tend to compare to almost 5 times of the value of their hometown's currency. So next time before you dump the flyers into the bins, do reconsider giving it to these people and let them earn some money and create one less waste.

Creating the right environment

I was very impressed by this primary school name Northview Primary School in Yishun. I felt a cool breeze coming through when I step into the school compound during a sun scorching afternoon at 33 degree Celcius. My second visit to the school impressed me with the effort to bring green concepts to the students. It was raining and I saw there were more than 10 units of heavy duty 55 gallon drum placed to collect rain water. The school has 4 levels with hanging plants along the classrooms corridors. These measures are the best way to educate our younger generations to be environmentally conscious and be proactive when occasion arises. This drives me deeper in thoughts. We are constantly yearning for better results and higher academical achievement for our children, and very often we lost the most important element that is affecting our daily lives. If most of our neighborhood schools can practice the same as Northview Primary School. We will be able to create a more conscious society and more improvement can be expected in near future.

Are we doing enough?

We learned about 7 blind men trying to figure out how an elephant looks like. Each has his own perspective of the element from their derivations. None of them were totally incorrect and neither of them were totally right. I always remind myself to look at things with all aspects and angles, it would not be fair to stigmatized any society for being socially conscious about going green.
I felt that it was an irony that the developing countries, which has lesser of information technology and knowledge , are doing a lot more than our developed societies. The Filipinos pick up used chips foil bags and sow them into recycled bags. The Chinese buy die cut disposable diaper waste pieces from The States to recycle into fan blades. These are people using any limited resources available for them to recycle for SURVIVAL. On the contrary, when you try to visit any fast food restaurant on weekend mornings in Singapore, the places are packed with families swamping in to buy breakfast using foam packaging for hotcakes and breakfast sets. The unrecyclable garbage created was beyond imaginations. You will probably be the center of attractions if you walk in with a self prepared container to pack your own hotcakes for takeout. It is a true but a painful reality that I need to mock at myself as a Singaporean. Be it conscious or not, it has become a fact that the poorer one is, the more effort they have put in going green.
On the other hand, there are developed countries that is relentlessly promoting going green at national level. Japan has very organized recycling system and is constantly still trying to improve on it.
So are we doing enough? The answer starts at oneself, the three Golden "R" ie Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is for you to start now and don't wait for somebody to do it.