Week 7 (28/11/2022 - 04/12/2022)

Week 7 Blog

As a small nation, Singapore is still reliant on neighboring Malaysia for 40-50% of our water needs, while the rest of our water supply drawn from local catchment, NEWater and desalination. Given that water is a valuable commodity, we need to do all we can to reduce our usage. 

Lately, I noticed that I have been taking long showers lasting around 7 minutes. I also read online that each minute of a shower uses up 2.5 gallons (9.5 litres of water), which was around my daily water intake! I was shocked and decided to force myself to reduce my shower time from 7 minutes to around 5 minutes to save water. 

Besides water, another environmental issue of concern is greenhouse gas emissions. Road vehicles release large amounts of harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane which greatly contribute to the enhanced greenhouse effect in our atmosphere which leads to global warming. 

This made me think of the occasions when I had to take a Gojek to school when I wake up late. Although public transport such as buses and MRTs do release these same gases, the emission per person is reduced since these modes of transport can accommodate many people per trip. In perspective, based on statistics from Singapore's Ministry of Transport, a car with a driver uses 9 times the energy used by a bus and 12 times the energy used by a train on a per passenger-km travelled basis. Hence, I want to take special note and effort to wake up early for school so I can take public transport to school, reducing my carbon emission.

I believe my small actions to conserve water and reduce my carbon footprint will have large, positive impacts in the long run. As the well-known saying goes "Rome was not built in a day", we cannot expect to see the results of our actions spontaneously and quickly. Instead, we should do our best day to day, eventually cumulating our efforts and having positive impacts on the environment.