Straits Times 6 Jun 09;
WHEN it comes to climate change, three individuals are leading the charge at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Their on-campus efforts - organising talks, recycling waste, even getting their peers to switch to a meat-free diet - do more than just pay seasonal lip service on Earth Day or World Environment Day; they are perennial.
One of them, NUS administrative executive Loo Deliang, has been plotting a green path for the past two years.
While doing research for a paper on the impact of climate change on the economy in his final year at NUS, he found awareness of global warming sorely lacking among his peers.
Seeking to educate them, he joined and later took charge of the campus environmental advocacy group, Students Against Violation of the Earth.
Sacrificing sleep, as well as many weekends and holidays, he spent his time e-mailing hundreds of academics and policymakers to speak at the university.
Now 25, the economics graduate has seen his group grow to more than 100 members.
In the last 12 months alone, he has organised three major conferences on climate change at NUS, including the National Sustainability Conference in February.
The three-day forum brought together 12 eminent academics to address more than 350 participants on topics such as the threat of rising sea levels, melting ice glaciers and changing weather patterns.
For undergraduate Calvin Tan, 22, doing his bit for the environment is more of a physical enterprise.
Once a month, the first-year life science undergraduate and 19 others collect recyclable items from more than 100 bins spread across the university's 19ha campus.
Each month, the group collects about 280kg of recyclable items such as plastic bottles and drink cans, although the work is not a pleasant experience.
'The bins are segregated according to waste type - plastics and paper. But it is common to pick up tissue paper filled with mucus or contaminated with other fluids,' Mr Tan said.
As for social work undergraduate Ong Wei Tao, 24, he believes simply switching to a meat-free diet will mend the environment.
It is a belief based on a 2006 United Nations report, which found that raising livestock generates more carbon emissions than all the world's transport put together - up to 18 per cent, to be precise.
He has convinced more than 250 of his university peers, who have also vowed to go meat-free to lower their carbon footprint.
And while awareness on campus has been raised, Mr Loo is not resting yet.
'To turn this into something sustainable cannot be achieved by just one individual,' he pointed out. 'It needs a concerted effort from all the stakeholders - academics, administrators and students.'
AMRESH GUNASINGHAM
