Category: Article

Sustainable Alternatives for Textile Production

| December 17, 2019

Asia’s textile industry is booming, accounting for 46 percent share of the manufacturing market. The strong presence of fabrics, apparel manufacturing and home furnishing facilities in the region are contributing factors to this growth.

Along with the growing market trends, the textile industry faces constant pressure to meet consumer demand for greener production and more transparency at every stage of the value chain. Traditional production processes, as such, are being phased out and replaced with new and innovative technologies focused on shortening the fashion cycle with minimal environmental impact.  From repurposing waste to fabric, ensuring cleaner air for production to minimising wastewater, the textile industry is embracing elements of eco-innovation in its pursuit of sustainable production.

Fabric upcycled from waste

The throw-away culture among consumers, cultivated by fast fashion and rapid plastics production prompted Italian recycling company, Aquafil to develop ECONYL®, a nylon fabric made from discarded fishing nets, fabric scraps and other waste. Resembling traditional nylon in quality and physical properties, ECONYL® can be recycled multiple times.

The process involves chemically breaking down plastic waste to its core units, or polymers, before re-assembling back into ECONYL®.  The nylon reduces over 50 percent of the CO2-equivalent emissions. The fabric is lauded for its high level of traceability as information about its sourcing and production processes are publicly available. Renowned luxury brands like Prada, Gucci and Burberry are already introducing the upcycled fabric into their products.  Prada plans to replace its nylon collection with ECONYL® by 2021, turning the short life of disposable materials into a long-run recycling regime for consumers to adopt.

Pure air for clean production

Like many other plants, air quality is a major concern for the textile industry due to the presence of moisture, dust particles, oil and solid contaminants that adversely affect air quality. For textile manufacturing, compressed air serves as an energy source in production processes such as the operation of air jet looms and spinning. The S-3 and S-4 series of screw compressors developed by BOGE Kompressoren, a leading compressed air specialist, are the ultimate solution to cost-effective operations.

BOGE’s oil-free compressor systems offer several  advantages – they are clean, non-toxic and can transfer large amounts of energy simultaneously. The oil-lubricated compressed air reduces friction, prevents corrosion and wear-out of woven actuators in machinery, thereby increasing their lifespan. BOGE’s integrated compressed air treatment systems can also be equipped with advanced abilities to remove oil, water and dust particles entirely for clean-air production where necessary.

Zero wastewater and chemicals

For every 1 kg of coloured apparel, traditional textile dyes require between 95 to 150 litres of water, resulting in tremendous toxic waste. Dutch company DyeCoo’s waterless and dryless process for dyeing cloth is both time- and cost-efficient. A single DyeCoo dyeing machine saves 32 million litres of water and 176 tons of processing chemicals annually.

DyeCoo uses patented technology to dye fabrics with CO2 instead of water. Its highly pressurised mechanism recycles carbon dioxide at a “supercritical” state – the midpoint between liquid and gas above 31.3 Celcius. Dyes dissolve easily into the highly soluble material, penetrating deep into the fibres without water or bonding chemicals, creating vibrant colours with no excess toxins. Ninety-five percent of the evaporated carbon dioxide is then recycled back in the closed loop cycle. Nike, Adidas, and Ikea are among the key brands working with DyeCoo to develop sustainable and innovative methods to drive business growth.

Smart, safe, sustainable

As fashion and textile interweave into the future, labour-intensive manufacturing will continue to undergo major transitions towards smarter textile production. A holistic approach, incorporating eco-friendly designs, innovative materials and processes, optimisation of resource consumption and recycling is the way forward to making textile processing safer, cleaner and more sustainable.

Transforming the built environment: IBEW 2019 galvanises industry to create smarter, more sustainable people-first cities

| September 1, 2019

Exciting line-up for new all-in-one tradeshow platform revealed including cutting-edge industry showcases, expert seminar series and exclusive site tours

SINGAPORE, 26 AUGUST 2019: To meet the pressing and diverse needs of Asia-Pacific’s built environment industry, the International Built Environment Week (IBEW 2019) organized by the Building Construction Authority of Singapore (BCA) will feature four dynamic anchor tradeshows from 4-6 September 2019. The new all-in-one tradeshow platform will cover the entire built environment value chain. The shows have been specially curated to showcase the industry’s technological prowess and accelerate the transformation towards a more sustainable, smart and efficient built environment.

Tradeshows include: BEX Asia covering the sustainability and integrated design and planning space, Innobuild (IB) Asia focusing on construction 4.0, Mostra Convegno Expocomfort (MCE) Asia zooming in on energy efficient solutions and renewable energy, and Smart Cities and Buildings (SCB) Asia featuring the latest digital advances in the construction sector.

To welcome over 550 exhibiting companies showcasing cutting edge solutions (more…)

Living Planet,Singapore

| August 27, 2019

The Earth is out of radiative energy balance. There is more energy coming into the Earth’s atmosphere than is being radiated back to space. The reason for this is the excess of greenhouse gases (GHGs), primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2), that are being emitted to the atmosphere from our combustion of fuels (coal, oil and natural gas). If this energy imbalance is not addressed then the world will continue to warm with dire consequences for humanity and wildlife.

The Earth’s energy imbalance is now being quantified accurately by a global array of Argo floats - a flotilla of over 3,000 remote sensing devices distributed throughout the world’s oceans that are constantly monitoring its heat content. Over time, the Argo floats have measured a large and growing global energy imbalance. In the period from 2005 to 2016 the increase in ocean heat content measured by the Argo floats was equivalent to a planetary energy gain equal to the detonation of over 500,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons - every day. This level of energy gain in the Earth’s climate system has become the key driver for the observed increase in extreme weather events around the world, the disintegration of the planet’s ice-sheets and a threat to the stability of global ecosystems.
Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are now at 413 ppm, up from a pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. As a result, global warming is both accelerating and intensifying, where the radiative forcing from GHG emissions is 40% higher since 1990. The month of July 2019 was the warmest month ever to be recorded since records began in 1850, where the warmest 20 years have all occurred in the last 22 years. The last 4 years have been the warmest of all. Overall, average global surface temperatures have now risen by about 1oC since the start of the industrial revolution about 250 years ago.

Satellite measurements have confirmed that the Greenland and Western-Antarctic Ice-sheets are now losing ice-mass at an accelerating rate. In turn, this is driving non-linear changes in the climate system and a faster rate of sea-level rise. Paleoclimate evidence, from the Earth’s climate history, shows that during the Eemian interglacial period (about 120,000 years ago) that sea levels, at thermal equilibrium, were up to 9 metres higher than today. For a predicted level of global warming of over 30C by the year 2100, then the world will resemble the climate of the midPliocene (3-5 million years ago) where sea levels, at thermal equilibrium, were between 15 and 25 metres higher than today. These ancient changes in the radiative heat balance of the planet were caused by slow and steady changes in the Earth’s orbit and spin axis operating over a time scale of hundreds of thousands of years. In contrast, the rate of global now taking place is much more rapid and completely unprecedented in the paleoclimate record.

In October 2018, the United Nations issued a stark warning to the world. We have just 12 years to avoid a committed mean global temperature rise of 1.5oC, or risk triggering catastrophic climate change. According to the UN, keeping to the 1.5oC target under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement will require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid what the UN refers has previously referred to as “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

The intricate relationships that exist between global ecosystems and biodiversity play a vital role in controlling the fluxes of GHGs and regulating climate stability. Coupled with the climate crisis, the world is also facing an equality dire ecological crisis which has been caused by the rapid and extensive degradation of the planet’s ecosystems, including its oceans, forests, and wetlands.

As a result, the Earth has now entered its sixth-mass extinction event, where the rate of species loss has risen to between 100 and 1000 times higher than natural background levels. In the last 50 years alone, the world is estimated to have lost over 60% of its wildlife, and about 75% of the planet’s land area is now degraded as a result of modern agricultural practices and rapid urbanisation.

Nothing short of massive, strong and global coordinated global action is now required to prevent a climate catastrophe and ecological breakdown, and their associated risks to humanity. A return to the climate of the current Holocene interglacial period, in which human civilisation developed, requires that the Earth’s radiative energy imbalance be corrected via rapid GHG reductions and the restoration of global ecosystems.

Singapore faces unique threats and opportunities in the face of a rapidly changing climate system and
the global ecological crisis. As a small, tropical island state nation, Singapore is increasingly vulnerable to both rising sea levels and warmer temperatures. The nation also faces indirect threats from a disruption of the global food supply chain as a result of changing weather patterns. In the face of these threats, Singapore is nonetheless well-placed to increase its resilience to climate change by developing appropriate adaptation and mitigation strategies. By leveraging its economic strength, its robust urban planning system, and its advanced research capabilities, Singapore has a unique opportunity to rise to the challenges of a changing climate. Furthermore, as a leader in the ASEAN region, Singapore also can develop advanced technologies to address sustainability challenges and lead the way for the rapidly growing nations of Southeast Asia.

by

Prof Dr Jeff Obbard

Prof. Jeff Obbard

Living Planet Pte Ltd has been recently established in Singapore by Professor Jeff Obbard, an environmental scientist and ecologist who has spent the last 25 years living and working in Singapore, and around the world. Jeff spent over 17 years working at the National University of Singapore (NUS), in the Faculty of Engineering. He was also the Research Director at the Tropical Marine Science Institute, and was also as Director of its Sustainable Development & Water Alliance. During his time at NUS, Jeff served as the Principal Scientist for Bioenergy at the Agency of Science & Technology, and as Vice President for Science & Technology on a Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum project to develop low-carbon, renewable biofuels in Hawaii, USA. He has also served as an Expert Reviewer to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and led a team from NUS to win the United Nations Mondialogo Award for Sustainable Development. Jeff is also as a Visiting Professor to the School of Water, Energy & Environment at Cranfield University in the UK - one of the UK’s leading postgraduate engineering universities

By establishing Living Planet in Singapore, Prof Jeff will provide strategic advice to government and industry on matters relating to sustainable development, climate science and natural resource management. Prof Jeff is also a Board Member and Advisor to GreenIn-Future. “Living Planet looks forward to working in close partnership with Green-in-Future to provide expert advice and solutions to our clients on their sustainable development challenges”, he said.

You can contact Prof Jeff Obbard via his Linked-In profile at www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-obbard-phd, or via his email at obbardjeff@gmail.com.

New initiatives presented at COLA 2018

| June 24, 2019

Cities of Love Awards, also known as COLA, recognises outstanding initiatives developed by individuals, groups, and organisations, in their efforts to promote sustainability. Started in 2017, the awards are presented annually. This year, COLA 2018 award winners were announced on the 27th April 2019 at the Singapore Sustainability Academy. The prize presentation ceremony was inaugurated by Mr. Tai Lee Siang, the Founder of COLA and attended by Guest-of-Honor Dr. Teo Ho Pin, Mayor of North West CDC. (more…)

DOES CHINA’S EMBRACE OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY SET AN EXAMPLE FOR THE WEST?

| June 24, 2019

Innovation is far more than the simple launch of a new product or service that increases the profits of an organisation. Rather, the essence of innovation is to resolve problems – that is, taking action to survive. The emergence of the circular economy fits effortlessly within this more outcome-oriented understanding of innovation. It is an innovation of processes with the clear objectives of keeping our environmental and business ecosystems alive and ensuring a symbiotic existence between industry, consumers and our valuable environment.
(more…)

NDRC unveils 2019 Feed-in-Tariff Levels for PV Projects

| May 15, 2019

Source:  www.china-epc.org
Translated by PV Guangzhou Committee
The 11th Guangzhou International Solar Photovoltaic Exhibition 2019, a chance for the PV community to gather together and rethink the industry’s development path under 531 new policy, is to be held in China Import & Export Fair Complex, Guangzhou, China on August 16-18 th ,2019.
It was reported that the National Development and Reform Commission (also NDRC) announced the levels of solar FIT payments, including residential solar system: RMB 0.18/per KW.h, Region One (resource-rich regions): RMB 0.40/per KW.h; Region Two (low-and-moderate-resource regions): RMB 0.45/per KW.h; Region Three (energy-constrained regions): RMB 0.55/per KW.h. (more…)

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