Founder and Director of the consulting business Zero Waste City, Rémi provides engineering consulting services to large commercial and industrial facilities on waste management, energy efficiency, and packaging design.
He has gained a strong experience as a consultant covering a wide range of industries and technologies in New Zealand, Australia, and Singapore.
He is a certified TRUE Advisor (Total Resource Use Efficiency) by the U.S. Green Building Council Inc. This certification recognised his knowledge in Zero Waste programs and his ability to support businesses to achieve the TRUE Zero Waste certification.
There are two main reasons why companies would contact me: reduce waste or make their packaging more sustainable.
In the first case of waste reduction, either to reduce costs or to be more sustainable business, I would ask them three questions:
Based on the answers, I can estimate the potential cost savings and make suitable recommendations on the immediate next steps.
When willing to improve packaging to make it more sustainable, I would ask:
Based on the above, we can determine the next steps to get the best outcome for the business.
On the waste management side, the typical questions we get are around recycling. We noticed that there are a lot of misconceptions about what recycling means, what can be recycled, and how recycling works in Singapore.
For packaging design, we are often asked to endorse or confirm the soundness of a switch to a new packaging, material, or design. In this field, there are unfortunately a lot of greenwashing, and our first step is to clarify the definition in order, for the companies we work with, to understand what they are talking about. Quite often, they eventually realise that their original packaging was actually pretty good.
As part of its engagements in the Zero Waste Masterplan, Singapore has been and will be enforcing a series of new regulations in the coming years:
The coming regulations are:
Those new regulations are exciting opportunities for businesses to achieve substantial cost savings and for Singapore to build a more sustainable and liveable environment.
Yes, and sometimes, we are even talking about making money out of the trash! The amount of cost-savings depends on the type of waste and the industry. As a rule of thumb, it can easily reach about 60% of the annual cost of general waste collection.
The easier it is to separate the major waste streams (plastic, fibre, organic, metal, glass), the more money the business is likely to save.
In Singapore, the number one challenge is land scarcity. This applies to businesses as well. Utilities (water, energy, and waste) usually represent 10% of the footprint of a facility and anything that can be done to minimise it will be preferred.
Fortunately, Singapore strongly support the local industries in adopting best practices and funding is available for companies willing to implement new technologies to reduce waste, this includes the 3R Fund.