Going “Green” — What does it mean for SMEs in Singapore?
Climate Change: The Reality
Despite what the Trump administration says, 97% of climate scientists agree that our actions are harming our planet and that the evidence is incontrovertible.
Collective Responsibility
Today, many Fortune 500 companies have taken the leadership in making the transition to 100% renewable electricity. Apple’s target is to use solar and wind energy to run its global operations and Google recently announced that they will reach 100% of renewable energy for their global operations this year.
What Can We Do in Singapore?
Singapore is constrained by a critical resource for renewable power generation: Land. We simply don’t have enough of it to generate sufficient renewable energy for our country. However, it does not mean that we cannot find alternatives to reduce our environmental footprint.
It’s The Small Things
Ultimately, it’s the little steps that each one of us takes. Every. Single. Day. How? Use solar power for your house (the most practical and cheapest form of power generation today). Insisting that your condo or housing estate does real recycling as opposed to just chucking everything into the trash after sorting. Taking a cloth bag along for shopping as opposed to using plastic. Using bioplastics that are biodegradable for eating utensils and plates at parties. Eating more vegetables instead of meats to reduce environmental destruction. Teaching our kids to be more environmentally aware of how they contribute to the problem. Switching to warm LEDs and getting rid of fluorescent tubes. Buying energy efficient washing machines and heat pump dryers. Investing in more power-efficient air conditioning (which incidentally, is the largest contributor to a building’s electricity consumption in Singapore).
And finally: Forcefully making the case known to our government so that they pursue more green policies similar to other environmentally-conscious first world countries like Germany.
It’s up to us. And we should as small business owners be proactive about this. We are after all, the Captains of Our Fates.
This article is also published on the ASME Entrepreneurs’ Digest ED #77 for January/February 2018.
About the Author
Dr. Tan is a co-founder of Finaxar, a Monk’s Hill Ventures and 500 Startups portfolio company. He was an early investor and pioneer of touch feedback at Immersion (NASDAQ: IMMR, 10 patents). TouchSense is today felt through smartphones, BMW’s iDrive, Sony’s PlayStation and millions of other devices. He then went on to help a fledgling Primesense start up. Primesense’s technology became Apple’s FaceID for iPhone X. He holds a M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
