Happy New Year from the Marine Park
Sisters' Islands Marine Park
Happy New Year with R.U.M.!
Restore Ubin Mangroves (R.U.M.) Initiative
2019 Schedule for our FREE Guided Walks
Adventures with the Naked Hermit Crabs
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Best of our wild blogs: 3 Jan 19
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Indonesia: 90 percent of tsunami survivors in Lampung want to be resettled
Antara 1 Jan 19;
S Lampung, (ANTARA News) - President Joko Widodo ((Jokowi) said that nearly 90 percent of residents of Sebesi island in Lampung province, who survived the Dec 22, 2018 tsunami in Sunda Strait, want to be resettled to other areas.
"I just asked the Sebesi residents. In essence, they want to be resettled to higher ground. They all are no longer brave enough to live in coastal areas," he stated, after holding a dialog with survivors of the tsunami, on Wednesday.
The tsunami survivors of Sebesi Island are currently taking refuge in the Kalianda indoor tennis court in South Lampung district.
The president noted that they will be resettled on the same island.
"But they will live on higher ground on the island," he added.
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Indonesia: Floods, landslides to dominate 2019 amid continuing environmental damage
Karina M. Tehusijarana The Jakarta Post 2 Jan 19;
Flooding and landslides will remain the predominant type of disasters in Indonesia in 2019, a repeat of what happened in 2018 when thousands of natural disasters happened, a government disaster office has projected.
The last day of 2018 saw a fatal landslide in Sukabumi, West Java, which killed at least 15 as of the first day of 2019.
"We predict that in 2019, over 2,500 natural disaster will occur across Indonesia," National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) spokesperson Sutopo Purwo Nugroho told reporters on Monday. "Hydrometeorological disasters such as floods, landslides and puting beliung [small tornadoes] will continue to dominate and make up about 95 percent of total disasters."
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Why we are pushing for divestment from fossil fuel in fight against climate change
BRANDON CHEE, JERALD LIM, AND BERTRAND SEAH Today Online 1 Jan 19;
Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing recently spoke about how just as Singapore’s past 50 years have been defined by its successful water story, the next 50 will be defined by its ability to manage its energy challenges amidst the threat of climate change.
The special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contained stark warnings to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, it called for governments to fully decarbonise their economies as soon as possible, which necessitates transitioning from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy.
This is why we, a group of National University of Singapore students, have been campaigning for divestment from fossil fuels.
Our efforts have been targeted towards getting NUS, who invests a small percentage of its S$3.7 billion endowment in fossil fuels, to commit to full divestment by 2024.
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No more plastic straws with Yakult drinks
CYNTHIA CHOO Today Online 30 Dec 18;
SINGAPORE — Yakult Singapore will stop providing straws from the end of the year, the company said in a Facebook post on Thursday (Dec 27).
The announcement comes as a growing number of food and beverage manufacturers, restaurants and cafes around the world have joined the movement to cut down on the use of plastics.
Even entire cities have jumped on the bandwagon. Most recently, the authorities in Bali have enacted a ban on single-use plastics, including shopping bags, styrofoam food packets and straws.
In its post, Yakult Singapore said that it will be removing straws from two of its products — Yakult and Yakult Ace Light — “from end December 2018 onwards”, as part of efforts “in contributing to environment protection and sustainability”.
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Best of our wild blogs: 1 Jan 19
Celebrating Singapore's Shores on the road: September - December
Celebrating Singapore Shores!
Love MacRitchie’s 2018 in Review
Love our MacRitchie Forest
Giant Clam Girl’s 2018 Highlights!
Mei Lin NEO
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Best of our wild blogs: 31 Dec 18
Night Walk At Windsor Nature Park (28 Dec 2018)
Beetles@SG BLOG
2018 - Looking Back
Butterflies of Singapore
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Community gardening scheme plants a million native species in a decade
Michelle Ng Straits Times 30 Dec 18;
SINGAPORE - Retiree May Lee initially took up gardening after her doctor advised her to spend more time in the sun to boost her Vitamin D levels following a severe bout of meningitis in 2012.
What started as a means of recuperation blossomed into a hobby for Mdm Lee.
Today, the healthy 62-year-old leads a team of more than 20 gardeners and tends to three flourishing community gardens, which occupy 20,000 sq ft next to Block 106, Bukit Batok Central.
Cosy Garden, the largest of the three, has a koi pond, turtle pond and unique crops such as asparagus and Brazilian grape trees mainly for educational purposes, as children from nearby childcare centres visit it regularly.
The other two gardens are home to edible plants such as vegetables, herbs and more than 30 types of fruit trees including cempedak and mangosteen. When harvested, these crops are distributed among the residents and the underprivileged.
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A made-in-Singapore solution to the world's plastic waste problem
NUS scientists have found a way to turn plastic bottles and other wastes into 'one of the most promising materials in the 21st century'.
Derrick A Paulo and Anne-Marie Lim Channel NewsAsia 30 Dec 18;
SINGAPORE: Imagine there’s a way to turn the plastic waste that ends up in oceans and landfills into a life-saving material, say, for making cheap fire-resistant jackets for all people.
It isn’t hard to do – at least, not any more – for a team of researchers in Singapore dreaming of reducing environmental waste and sharing their breakthrough with the world.
These scientists from the National University of Singapore and the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology have converted polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles into a highly insulating and absorbent material called aerogel.
Aerogels, the lightest and most porous materials known to man, have existed since the 1930s – and were used to insulate the Mars Pathfinder rover in the 1990s.
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Malaysia moves to reap the benefits of processing global plastic waste
After China shut its doors to the world's plastic waste, Malaysia became a go-to destination for some countries looking to get rid of their trash.
Aqil Haziq Mahmud Channel NewsAsia 30 Dec 18;
KUALA LUMPUR: In a bright yellow terraced house near the intersection of a small but busy highway, Ngoo Kwi Hong stood up abruptly from her cushioned stool.
Her living room was losing light as dark clouds gathered over the sleepy town of Jenjarom, a 40-minute drive southwest of the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. But Ngoo was determined to show the bags under her eyes.
She flicked on the light switch and pointed at her face. “I’ve not been able to sleep for days,” the 46-year-old told Channel NewsAsia in Malay. “At night I cannot breathe. I feel like dying.”
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How mountains of U.S. plastic waste ended up in Malaysia, broken down by workers for $10 a day
SHASHANK BENGALI Los Angeles Times 29 Dec 18;
In a derelict warehouse complex plastered with “For Rent” signs an hour from the Malaysian capital, four women squatted on upturned buckets. Their fingernails were cracked and nubby, their headscarves dampened with sweat.
Wielding hair dryers, they heated and peeled labels from a waist-high pile of discarded plastic electric meters. The stickers affixed to each of the plastic round gray casings bore the sun-like logo of a faraway power company: the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
How scrap from California ended up in a junkyard 8,500 miles away, broken down manually by workers earning $10 a day, is the story of the reshaping of the global garbage and recycling system.
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