Transcript of Speech by President Tharman Shanmugaratnam at the Launch of Carousell Group's Circular Economy Report

Lucas, Marcus, Siu Rui, and your whole team,

I was very happy to accept your invitation, as this is a good move that you're taking. Carousell’s inaugural Circular Economy Report is another step towards encouraging all of us to change our habits so that we reuse and extend the life of the products we consume.

We are still at a very early stage of what's required, both in the business sector and amongst all of us as consumers - an early stage of making that transition to more sustainable living. We’ll have to get there. The world has no choice and we’ve no choice in Singapore. We have to start transforming business practices, and transforming our culture as consumers. It can be done.

Some of it is going to involve a cost, everywhere in the world. The world will have to pay a cost in moving from an unsustainable set of practices to sustainable practices. The simple reason is because the unsustainable practices have massive economies of scale today, while sustainable practices, such as new materials and new forms of power generation do not yet have the full economies of scale.

We’ll eventually get there, but during the transition, there’ll be higher costs to be paid, everywhere in the world. But the higher cost we pay during the transition also saves us vastly higher costs if we don't make the transition. First, because as global warming increases, the costs of mitigating it and bringing it down will be much, much higher.

And second, because today, we're not paying the hidden costs of a lot of our practices and consumption. We’re not paying the hidden costs – of excessive water use, the pollution of the environment, and of course, the hidden costs of greenhouse gas emissions. And eventually, we’ll have to pay those costs.So we have to pay some costs now in the transition, to avoid much larger costs later.

But a lot of what we have to do to achieve more sustainable living also comes at no cost, and that’s part of the beauty of moving to a circular economy. It involves changes in tastes and preferences, without actually reducing our standards of living.

Businesses have to transform their practices, and we’ll all have to transform the way we live.

Businesses will have to change - everything from sourcing of materials, to making the products to marketing them to selling them and to delivering them. Everything from source to delivery has to change. And we’re still at the very early stage of this transformation.

Consumers too, can change. Changing our diets, like switching away from beef, because cows are a major contributor to both greenhouse gas emissions and growing the feed for cows uses a disproportionate amount of water and land.

But also, what we’re talking about today, which is about reusing and extending the life of consumer products.

The two big problems to tackle so we move towards sustainable consumption are food waste and fashion. Just food waste (not food consumed) and the fashion industry together account for about 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. And we can clearly do something about both.

There's a new movement in Singapore to reduce food waste. Businesses are sprouting up, to upcycle food waste - converting it into animal feed, fertiliser, even into biogas for energy generation. And the new law that's going to come into place next year will require that food production businesses, food processing businesses, hotels, shopping malls, take responsibility for proper segregation of food waste, so that it can be processed and upcycled and not mixed up with other waste. It’s very hard to recycle plastic, for instance, once it’s contaminated with food waste.

So that's underway. There is also potential for businesses to team up to use each other's byproducts and waste. A very interesting example, which I read about in The Straits Times, was about a bakery (Baker & Cook) and a brewery (Brewerkz). The bakery using the wasted grains from the brewery to make sourdough and the like, and the brewery using surplus sourdough to make, what must be fairly good, pale ale.

But fashion is the other big piece. It contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, and the excessive use of water. As well as pollution, especially because of the toxic chemicals used in dyes. And fashion is estimated to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50% over just the rest of this decade, if nothing changes in the business. So, it's a major issue, and I’m glad that fashion is one of the major categories in your efforts to encouraging reuse.

We can change. It means encouraging everyone, by the end of this decade, whenever we're buying a product, we look at the materials used and their sustainability. There has to be a proper system of verification, of their carbon footprint, water footprint, and how they contribute to pollution.

And we have to reuse what we have wherever possible. First, what we already own - repairing them, refurbishing them, which used to be common in the old days. Making it a fashion, like you are trying to encourage.

And secondly, recycling and upcycling what we have. In some parts of the world, vintage fashion and second-hand fashion is now much valued. In fact, you have to pay a little more for it because it's valued.

It’s basically a shift in culture. Reuse, and not feel that we’re any lesser for it but actually we are saving the environment we depend on.

We can do this. Avoid food waste, and also grow a whole industry to upcycle food waste. Avoid the repetitious change of cloth styles and fashion, and go for sustainable materials and reusing, repairing, refurbishing, as well as passing on both pre-loved and much-loved items for someone else to use.

We can do it. For the sake of the planet, and keeping it liveable for all.