New SG Eco Office and $50 Million SG Eco Fund to Promote Environmental Sustainability in Communities

New SG Eco Office and $50 Million SG Eco Fund to Promote Environmental Sustainability in Communities

1 The Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources (MEWR) has set up a new SG Eco Office. It will undertake efforts to promote Singapore’s sustainability agenda in our communities, so as to address evolving environmental challenges such as climate change and increasing resource constraints. MEWR will also launch a $50 million SG Eco Fund to support the co-creation of sustainability initiatives with Singaporeans.

SG Eco Office

2 The SG Eco Office will be the central body driving and coordinating sustainability initiatives across communities in Singapore. The Office will develop holistic benchmarks and indicators to measure and track the progress of these projects, taking into consideration factors such as energy and water consumption, waste generation, and other aspects of sustainability such as food production and carbon emissions.

3 By adopting a systems-level approach that cuts across the 3P – People, Private and Public – sectors, the new Office hopes to support the achievement of Singapore’s national sustainability targets, in partnership with Singaporeans. ^[1]

SG Eco Fund

4 The SG Eco Office will also administer the $50 million SG Eco Fund which will be disbursed over a period of five years. The fund will focus on supporting sustainability projects that nudge people and communities towards environmentally-friendly behaviour. Through the funding of such projects, the SG Eco Office hopes to motivate and enable Singaporeans to take collective action for the environment, and build a Sustainable Singapore for future generations.

5 Examples of possible projects that the SG Eco Fund could support include a community farm that offtakes food waste from the nearby community for composting, or a collaboration with industry partners to testbed new sustainable technologies in an HDB town.

6 The fund will be made available to all the 3P sectors. More details on the fund, application procedures, and evaluation criteria will be announced in the second half of 2020.

Eco Towns

7 A key project under the SG Eco Office is to transform our existing towns into Eco Towns. Under HDB’s new Green Towns Programme, HDB will make enhancements to the built environment in our HDB towns to make them more environmentally sustainable, and also more liveable for residents. The plan will focus on three key areas: reducing energy consumption, recycling rainwater, and cooling our HDB towns. To complement HDB’s enhancements to the built environment, the SG Eco Office will focus on encouraging environmentally sustainable practices through:

i. Setting sustainability benchmarks and targets for all towns so that each resident is aware of how their individual efforts contribute towards a larger goal;

ii. Building environmental consciousness through community touchpoints such as ‘zero waste’ hawker centres; and

iii. Co-creating sustainable solutions with the community and private sector.

8 Tampines, Choa Chu Kang, and Nee Soon towns have been earmarked as Singapore’s Eco Towns. The SG Eco Office is currently working with the SP Group (SP), with support from Temasek, to transform Tampines town into an Eco Town. One initiative is the installation of Eco Boards in several HDB blocks. These Eco Boards are digital displays which will utilise data from smart meters to enable residents to get real-time updates of their block’s aggregated electricity and water usage. Residents can also track the amount of carbon emitted from their consumption practices, and pick up tips to lower their consumption.

9 In addition, the Eco Boards will feature block-level competitions, to spur adoption of a greener lifestyle (residents can also use the SP Utilities app to compare their own consumption against their block’s patterns). The Town Council will also be more aware of their resource usage, enabling more efficient estate management, and quicker spotting of anomalies that could cause resource wastage. Through town-level projects such as the Eco Boards, MEWR aims to promote values of sustainability in the community.

10 The SG Eco Office will work closely with various stakeholders, including the People’s Association (PA), Town Councils, grassroots organisations, and the private sector. Together, we will develop more sustainable community assets and programming in the three selected towns, to realise the vision of an Eco Town. MEWR hopes that these efforts will serve as a blueprint and inspire other towns to transform into greener, more sustainable towns.

[1] The national sustainability targets include those outlined in the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint, such as the goal of reducing Singapore’s energy intensity by 35% from 2005 levels by 2030, the goal of reducing the waste sent to Semakau Landfill each day by 30% by 2030 as outlined in the Zero Waste Masterplan, and the target to reduce domestic water consumption to 130 litres per capita per day.