Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Dr Vivan Balakrishnan has launched a new training programme to green the Republic’s manufacturing sector.
Speaking at the annual Singapore Environmental Achievement Awards (SEAA), where five local organisations were commended for their efforts in sustainability, Dr Balakrishnan said the new initiative would help spread critical knowledge to a large number of professionals within the sector.
The scheme is jointly developed by the Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMa) and the Workforce Development Agency (WDA). Businesses will be elegible for a 400 per cent tax deduction on training costs under the government’s Productivity and Innovation Credit scheme.
SMa said the new three unit programme, ‘Implement Sustainable Manufacturing’, will help managers evaluate and improve the sustainability of their operations and supply chains, as part of a series of courses on manufacturing. The course will be offered by the end of this year and is expected to involve about 200 professionals over two years.
SMa president George Huang said the federation is offering the training courses to encourage its 2,800 members to improve productivity and reduce their environmental footprint at the same time.
“We hope our lead will inspire our members and others to do more for the environmental cause,” he added.
Mr Huang noted that being ISO certified (by the International Standards Organization) is now a basic requirement in the international manufacturing arena, and that overseas buyers wanted to see that environmental policies are in place. “Being green will be a requirement,” he said.
Last month, SMa and WDA celebrated the achievements of the Certified Productivity and Innovation (CPI) programme, a project-led coaching initiative based on the globally recognised Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma operating standards. The average productivity increase for the ten companies participating in the scheme was 15 per cent over six months. The CPI scheme now has 35 members and is well on its way to its target of 50 members over two years.
The success of the CPI scheme led to the introduction of a scaled-down version targeted at small and medium –sized enterprises (SMEs), called SME Qiang or “SME Quality Initiative to Assist and Nurture Growth” programme.
SMa’s secretary-general Gwee Seng Kwong told Eco-Business that the SMa/WDA formula for training, coaching and implementation of better management practices was proving extremely successful and that chief executives and other high level managers were active participants. He added that based on positive feedback from clients, SMa has raised its targeted number of participants in the Qiang programme from 200 to 500.
“Our challenge is to educate SMEs to embrace the notion of going green, because it’s no longer a luxury. It’s survival now,” said Mr Gwee.
Singapore’s manufacturing sector has slightly more than 8,100 companies, 90 per cent of which are SMEs.
One of Singapore’s leading SMEs on sustainability issues is GreenPac, a homegrown company that provides environmentally-friendly packaging to industries world-wide. GreenPac won yesterday’s SEAA Top Achiever award for the manufacturing sector.
Dr Balakrishnan said at the awards, held at the Shangri-la hotel, that companies would face increasing resource constraints in the near future and that businesses that differentiate themselves through sustainable management would have a competitive advantage over those that do not.
He also commended the other winners, including Temasek Polytechnic (TP), which won the Top Achiever award for its contributions within the services sector.
TP’s 30 hectare campus serves as a model for green buildings and boasts sustainability features such as rainwater harvesting, an in-house energy management system, a certified-green data centre, and the use of recycled water for its cooling towers and irrigation. The institution also supports clean energy research and development (R&D) through a partnership with Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB). Through its conservation measures, TP has saved about S$1.7 million on energy costs and S$105,000 on water costs annually.
Mr Lee Peng Hon, acting executive director of SEC, said in a statement, “It is encouraging to observe how Temasek Polytechnic and Greenpac have successfully demonstrated the adoption of environmental sustainability with their core businesses. These SEAA Top Achievers are also making a difference by driving the adoption of environmental sustainability to global and local communities.”
Singapore technology firm HydroBall Technics won the SEC-Senoko Energy Green Innovation Award for the HydroBall System, an internationally patented automated cleaning system for air-conditioning tubes in commercial and industrial buildings. Merit awards were presented to power plant operator PowerSeraya and to international technology firm Seagate.
The awards were hosted by the Singapore Environment Council (SEC), SMa and Singapore energy company Senoko Energy, with additional support from the National Environment Agency, national water agency PUB and WDA.
Mr Lee told Eco-Business the awards are first and foremost meant to reward leadership, but also innovation, performance and system and management. This year the awards have expanded to reward companies who show high levels of transparency and sustainability reporting, he added.
It’s not just simply saving electricity and water, said Mr Lee: “To help a company enhance itself we look at changing the mindset and implanting sustainability into the management system.”
