Food waste recycler folds [News]

By Grace Chua, The Straits Times, 18 Nov 2011.

Singapore’s largest food waste recycling company has shut for good.

But IUT Global’s closure does not spell the end of the industry, as its customers search for alternatives and new players come on the scene.

The homegrown company started in 2008 and was feted by then Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim as a milestone in waste management and recycling.

The company aimed to one day process 800 tonnes of food daily, turning it into organic fertiliser and biogas for electricity to power up to 10,000 homes.

But by March this year, it was still collecting only 120 tonnes to 130 tonnes a day. That produced gas for electricity to power just 500 households, and it sold or gave away the organic compost that remained, said IUT managing director Edwin Khew. Read more

Better to barter [News]

By Grace Chua, The Straits Times, 8 Oct 2011.

INSTEAD of buying toys for her daughter, a housewife rents them. A Singaporean tutor learnt to drive in the United States by swopping his computer-repair skills for lessons.

And a young couple who traded his Hindi for her Mandarin even hit it off and tied the knot.

A new breed of consumers is renting, sharing, swopping and bartering, and a growing number of start-ups are popping up to meet their needs.

While such ‘collaborative consumption’ has been around for years, technology is playing a bigger role than before.

For example, websites such as Rent That Toy make it easy for parents to choose and order toys online, while car-pooling start-up MyRideBuddy has an iPhone application for people on the go. Read more

Die Die Must Share – The Idea of Collaborative Consumption

Eugene Tay, the Editor of Green Business Times and Founder of Green Future Solutions, is a person whom you would describe as a green maven – someone who reads and knows a lot about environmental trends and ideas, and who likes to share them with others.

Having come across many green ideas over the past few years, there is one recent idea Eugene would claim that he ‘die die must share’ – the idea of Collaborative Consumption.

Collaborative Consumption refers to the idea of sharing that is empowered by technology and social networks, and how it changes consumption and the way businesses operate.

Sharing also covers renting, swapping, lending, trading, exchanging, bartering, and gifting. The advantages of sharing are that fewer resources are used to make and ship products, and less waste are generated and disposed.

The term Collaborative Consumption was first described in 2010 in the book What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers.

Other resources with similar ideas on sharing include the book The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing by Lisa Gansky and the Shareable website. Read more

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