An eco conference was held by ITE College West to host the ITE-SBR MOU signing and the ITE-SBR Youth Eco Friend Award, with 3 distinguished speakers invited to speak at the end of the event. The ITE-SBR Youth Eco Friend Award is awarded to ITE students who actively participate in various environmental projects or activities. Hence, we had decided to acknowledge them for their efforts. We hope to inspire more students to step up and plan activities related to environmental sustainability.
Picture taken from: https://eco.ite.edu.sg/index.php/2017/10/13/eco-conference-2017/
The 3 speakers are Kim Stengert from World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Melvin Chow from Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and Nichol Ng, representing The Food Bank. They had given the audience a deep insight on sustainable seafood, food scarcity and redistribution of close-to-expiry food.
Mr. Stengert began by highlighting the need to feed the world’s ever-expanding population. He stressed that endangered fishes needed to be protected. This calls for some action to reduce shark’s fin demand in order to prevent extinction. Also, approximately 85% of the fishing done worldwide is unsustainable. If it maintains at this rate, the last fish in the ocean would be fished in the year 2048.
Mr. Chow explained how food supply in Singapore should not be taken for granted. As most of Singapore’s food is imported from neighbouring countries, we would be in a difficult situation if those countries stop exporting food into Singapore.
The last speaker, Ms Ng, spoke about her spoke about her business, The Food Bank. She began speaking about her hard times maintaining a business. By overcoming hardship, she managed to start The Food Bank and was able to work with many charitable organizations. Most of these charities needed meals, hence The Food Bank was able to source for unwanted food items from external sources. These unwanted food items range from close-to-expiry food items to high-end chocolates. A shop was set up to sell food items that are close to expiry for just a dollar, hoping to reduce any food wastage. A lot of food is wasted in Singapore daily and this is one of the businesses
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