New initiatives presented at COLA 2018

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.

Healthy products from ‘ugly’ food

This year, Ugly Food bagged the Distinction Award for Corporate category. Initially started out as a university project, Augustine Tan and Yeo Pei Shan has since then continued to carry out in-depth research about the cosmetic filtering of perfectly edible and nutritious food. They saw a gap in the society as they discovered how ‘ugly foods’ are put aside and often left uneaten. “We hope that our story can be shared to a bigger platform, to highlight that there is a direct way everyone can play a part to reduce food wastage, starting from understanding better the definition of edible, that not all ‘ugly’ produce is spoilt”, Pei Shan shared with Green Pulse when asked on her motivation for taking part in COLA.
Despite focussing fully on Ugly Food only a couple of months before submitting the application for the award in 2018, the positive impacts that Ugly Food have brought to the environment were tremendous. Pei Shan and her team transformed ‘ugly’ fruits into a range of healthy products such as popsicles, fruit tea and cold-pressed juice. Moving forward, the F&B social enterprise plans to work on three key areas – partnerships, product development, and education awareness.

Ugly Food will continue its effort to forge close partnerships with establishedimporters and supermarkets in reducing food wastage. As Pei Shan also explained, “we are still open to understand any businesses who are facing large volumes of unsold fresh produce that is still good to eat.”
The enterprise has also expanded to fresh produce start of this year and actively seeking new ways to expand its product offerings. Lastly, the team is currently working on “curating more education content and tying them together as workshops either in the form of gameplay or cooking workshops.” Through the education awareness initiatives, Pei Shan hopes that every participant “will develop the skills to differentiate what is safe to consume, how to better store fresh produce, and nevertheless the skills to cook up a great dish while reducing food wastage.”

Recycling in the community

While Ugly Food was commended for its initiatives under the corporate category, Recycle@North West received a Distinction Award for the Group category. Recycle@North West is a community initiative carried out by North West CDC where a network of green volunteers setup active recycling points around the district. Since its inception in October 2011, the project has collected more than 465,000 kgs of recyclables and expanded its recycling points from 3 to 23.Green Pulse had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Dennis Chee as the Co-Chairman of North West CDC Green Living Standing Committee about the initiative and what the team hopes to achieve further.

Mr. Chee was heartened to know that the efforts put in by volunteers, partners and residents in the North West CDC were recognised by COLA this year. He also highlighted that, “unlike other community recycling programmes where residents usually just place their recyclables in the recycling bags or bins, Recycle @ North West focuses on education and encourages Active Recycling.”

“At the recycling points, volunteers share with residents on how to recycle and what to recycle. While residents contribute and get involved actively in sorting the recyclables together, they learn more about resource conservation and bond with neighbours at the common recycling points.”

With the addition of more recycling points, it increases the accessibility for more residents to participate as well. Mr. Chee also hopes that residents would be more encouraged to play a bigger role in creating positive environmental impact by “progressing from participants to becoming active green volunteers and contribute by sharing their experiences on resource conservation with others in the community.”

In light of this, Dr. Teo Ho Pin also expressed the need for more community-led initiatives and how the annual COLA awards can serve as a source of motivation and inspiration. When speaking to Green Pulse, Dr. Teo repeatedly highlighted that sustainability is all about bottom up. “I hope to see more ground-up initiative by our residents in the community. So each individual, each community must take ownership. They have to work together and self-initiate, so it can sustain. It cannot be top down, it has to be bottom up”.

Afterall, every individual can contribute in safeguarding environmental sustainability. Small steps such as saying no to plastic straw, reducing the use of plastic bags, or simply throwing recyclable products into the recycling bin can make a difference. As Mr. Tai puts it, “the thing about sustainability is not just about saving the energy, not just about reducing carbon. We must have fun too! And fun comes from creativity. Overcoming the limitations of insufficient resources require creativity, and i think sustainability gives us the opportunity to exercise creativity”