ChangeMakersSG Day - Children as the Center of our Sustainability Goals
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ChangeMakersSG Day – Children as the Center of our Sustainability Goals
Climate change is real. The earth is warming, the ice is melting and the sea levels are rising. All over the globe, we are experiencing the effects of climate change in one way or another. The need for greater sustainability becomes more apparent globally, so does the importance embedding sustainability in our children’s education.
Since inception in 2014, Cultivate Central has placed working with children in the center of what they do. They are passionate about creating food gardens that would become learning gardens. A place designed to connect children with nature where they construct knowledge, explore values and develop an appreciation of the environment and its relationship to their worlds. After all, children are our future. And a sustainable future starts with the imparting the right knowledge to our future generation.
This is why Geneco supports Cultivate Central. Together, we aim to inspire children to pick up sustainable living habits through fun and simple activities such growing food in small urban spaces.
During the recent March school holidays, Geneco and Cultivate Central put together a series of workshops and hands-on activities at Bedok Mall to bring children closer to nature.
Existing Geneco customers were invited to an exclusive Microgreens Workshop for children. Through a 1-hour session, they get to learn everything about growing, caring, harvesting, and finally, preparing these microgreens for consumption. Looking at their journal drawings, you’ll be amazed by how much they have learnt within a short hour. Growing greens seem much easier than we thought.
From mixing the soil, scattering the seeds to watering and caring for them, they get their hands dirty just to prepare their very own set of microgreens such Kang Kong, Broccoli, Red Beets, Sunflower, and Red Radish to bring home.
There were also other hands-on activities for all those who didn’t manage to join us at the microgreens workshop. For instance, they got up close and personal with one of the most important friends in our gardens – worms!
You are never too small to make a difference! Making the world a greener place starts today. If we can all nurture and inspire our next generation to live more sustainably, imagine what our future could be.
Start your sustainable journey with us today by choosing Geneco’s Get it Green plan.
ChangeMakersSG Day - Supporting Healthy, Locally Produced Food
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ChangeMakersSG Day – Supporting Healthy, Locally Produced Food
Singapore, a little red dot with limited farming land, it is no doubt that many of the food we are filling our stomachs with are imported. To be specific, we import over 90% of the food we consume. Thinking about it, importing such a staggering amount of food would definitely take a toll on our environment – be it from the amount of electricity required to move the produce or the carbon footprint we leave when importing these goods.
As a sustainable urban agriculture business, Comcrop aims to connect communities to healthy, locally produced food. They believe this is the key to create resilient, local ecosystems that produce fresh, flavorful food in a sustainable city. And that is why Geneco supports Comcrop. By choosing fresh, locally grown produce, you will not only be enjoying healthier, more nutritious food, you will also be reducing your carbon footprint.
On 2nd March, Geneco and Comcrop organised a Farm-to-Table Popiah Making Party exclusively for Geneco’s existing customers to experience first-hand with urban farming and making Popiah with fresh lettuce straight from the farm.
Through a 10 minutes tour of Comcrop’s rooftop greenhouse, our customers were able to see exactly how food is grown and learn about the process urban agriculture.
Then came the highlight of the party, the Popiah making. All vegetables used for the Popiah were farmed and produced by Comcrop, meaning that all vegetables consumed that night was sustainable and had less impact on the environment from transporting food long distances, and reduced food wastage along the way. Not only were our participants able to see the crops, they were able to taste the delicious, fresh, flavorful produce grown from the greenhouse they had just visited. Grown without pesticides or herbicides, Comcrop’s methods greatly reduce the amount of water, land and chemicals that would be used in producing the same amount of produce conventionally.
That night, all the participants went home with a full stomach and an even fuller heart. Going green has always been in the talks, and the need to save the planet has only gotten greater. It’s 2019, and it’s the year of Climate Action for Singapore, play your part and if everyone were a little conscious of their decisions, we would be able to create a very sustainable future for all.
Start your sustainable journey with us today by choosing Geneco’s Get it Green plan.
HSBC donates 24,267 hours of electrical power to Riding for the Disabled Association of Singapore via Geneco
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HSBC donates 24,267 hours of electrical power to Riding for the Disabled Association of Singapore via Geneco
HSBC’s donation, via retail electricity provider Geneco, will power the Riding for the Disabled Association of Singapore’s facility for 33 months
Singapore, 8 March 2019 – HSBC today has donated 24,267 hours of electricity to the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) of Singapore, a globally recognised facility which provides equine-assisted therapy (also known as hippotherapy) free of charge to children and adults with physical and mental disabilities.The donation is part of the Swing for Power initiative for this year’s HSBC Women’s World Championship (HWWC), and made in conjunction with International Women’s Day. HSBC will sponsor 24,267 hours of electricity via Geneco, one of the leading retail electricity providers in the nation’s Open Electricity Market (OEM).
Swing for Power
How powerful is a golf swing? Enough to power the community. Through collective golf swings, HSBC harnessed the power of the public for a good cause – Each golf swing from the HSBC Swing for Power initiative would help provide electricity to support the local community in Singapore.
Since 8 February 2019, five Swing for Power roadshows were set up across Singapore’s high human traffic areas – Plaza Singapura, West Mall, Century Square, VivoCity, and Ang Mo Kio Hub. A Swing for Power booth was also made available during the HWWC 2019 at Sentosa Golf Club from 28 February to 3 March 2019. For every golf swing made at the roadshows, interactive bus shelters and through the online game, HSBC contributed 3 hours of electricity to power facilities at RDA. The contribution was made via Geneco, RDA’s electricity provider. A total of 8,089 people participated in the Swing for Power initiative, harnessing 24,267 hours of electricity, which will power the RDA facility for 33 months.
With every swing, participants could take a picture of a screen with the number of hours of power they helped to generate. Participants were also given HSBC merchandise as a token of appreciation for their contribution.
“At HSBC, we’re always looking for ways to give back to our local communities. This year, we decided to harness the collective power of the people to support the amazing work that RDA is doing for those in need,” said Tony Cripps, Group General Manager and Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Singapore. “The success of the Swing for Power initiative was achieved by mobilising the public for the common good. We are heartened by the results from this initiative and we hope that the contribution will benefit more Singaporeans with disabilities.”
“We would like to thank HSBC for their generous contribution. The donation will enable us to further our cause, transform the minds, bodies and lives of those with disabilities through equine assisted activities,” said Choy Weng Leong, Executive Director of RDA Singapore.
Geneco helps RDA power the change
Commenting on the partnership, Low Boon Tong, Executive Vice President, Retail, Geneco by YTL PowerSeraya, said, “We strongly believe in powering the change for our community, not just through providing electricity, but further catalysing the good work that is already underway. We’re proud to partner with HSBC, and to provide 24,267 hours of electricity for RDA, to whom we have been retailing electricity for the past few years. By ensuring that their electricity needs are taken care of, they will have more resources to invoke positive change for their community.”
World-class golfer Pernilla Lindberg at RDA
On 26 February 2019, major winner and one of the world’s top 50 female golfers, Pernilla Lindberg of Sweden swapped the golf course for the riding paddock as she visited the RDA as a special guest to observe a daily therapy session to raise awareness for HSBC’s Swing for Power initiative. Lindberg, the reigning ANA Inspiration champion, was given a guided tour of the stables and riding centre and witnessed at first-hand the commendable work being delivered by the association each and every day.
The three-hour forum was targeted at carbon space experts, business owners and energy managers. Industry experts were brought in to share about how global climate action translates into direct cost impacts on business in Singapore and how companies can transit to a low-carbon business model.
One of the speaker, Mr Vinod Kesava, the co-founder and chief executive officer of the Climate Resources Exchange (CRX), shared about the untapped potential of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. He also shared the successes in the integration of renewable energy with environmental attributes from carbon credits and renewable energy certificates.
At one of the talks during the forum, Ms Pooja Bansal, a YTL-SV Carbon senior consultant specialising in energy and environment management, delved deeper into the renewable energy certificates and carbon credits verification process and provided practical tips to identify credible certificated and credits available in the market that can be used by companies for their respective environmental attributes.
Read full article here.
