Joshua Boey Yu Hin's Lifestyle Journal

Week 10 Blog Christmas, a widely-celebrated occasion associated with gift-giving and feasting. As for us, my extended family and I had a sumptuous meal on Christmas Eve with delectable delights including roast beef and salads.  However, amidst our lavish dinner, wastage was inevitable. After our meal, we had a lot of meat and cakes leftover. To reduce wastage, my family and I decided to split the food among ourselves and take it back to our own homes. The next day, my mother minced up the roast beef and stir-fried it to make a "corned beef-style" dish for dinner. This was a great way to reduce food wastage since none of the meat was thrown away or composted. Wasting food is unsustainable as agriculture leads to large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions such as methane  which contributes to the enhanced greenhouse gas effect in our atmosphere  through rearing cattle. In addition, clearing land for farm use involves deforestation, which further stimulates the enhanced green...

Week 9 Blog The weather has been very warm lately at around 29 to 30 degrees celsius, resulting in me using a lot of air conditioning this week which uses a lot of energy. To solve this problem, I decided to use the ceiling fan instead and to cope with the heat, I chose to use my curtains to block out the sun's rays during the day to reduce the heat entering my room.  Consequently, less heat would be retained at night when I sleep and I would be able to sleep comfortably despite the weather. I feel that reducing my usage of the air conditioner really helps in striving towards a more sustainable lifestyle since I am able to reduce my carbon footprint, which would alleviate global warming and climate change. 

Week 8 Blog The ongoing 2022 Qatar World Cup has captivated football fans all over the world with its nail-biting matches. However, as we know, with more visitors in Qatar, carbon emissions are bound to increase. So, what is Qatar doing about it? I recently read an article on how the Qatari government is doing their best to make the event an eco-friendly one. One example that piqued my interest is  the Al Kharsa’ah solar power plant which aims to reduce the country’s overall carbon footprint.  I feel that its very remarkable for Qatar, a country with  the world's third-largest natural gas reserve with o il and natural gas accounting for more than 70% of total government revenue is willing to   tap on   renewable energy options like solar energy. I believe that if Qatar, a country so rich in natural gas, is aspiring to be environmentally-friendly, we in Singapore do not have any excuse. As Singapore is a tropical country with access to large concentrations of sun...

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 sch...

Week 6 Blog I've always been keen on the idea of recycling items but simply never did as I felt it was troublesome and tedious. In addition, my family and I never had the time to sort out our trash and had been throwing all our rubbish down the normal rubbish chute.  With my sister done with her 'O' Levels and most of my assignments submitted, we worked together to sieve out the family's trash, separating recyclable items such as milk cartons and cardboard boxes from the normal trash. We then accumulated the recyclable items in plastic bags in preparation for recycling. At the end of the week, we went down to the recycling bin to deposit the recyclables. I felt content and fulfilled having done my part for the environment and I will try to make this a practice every week, conserving the metals, plastic and cardboard which can be re-purposed while reducing the wastage of space in the landfill. Though our actions are small, I believe that when we all come together, we can...

Week 5 Blog I've always had the issue of dealing with my worn-out clothes that can no longer be donated to charities like the Salvation Army or to my relatives. Thus, I would often throw them down the rubbish chute to dispose of them. I felt this was very unsustainable since the fabric used to make the clothes would be wasted when, in reality, it could be re-purposed for other uses or be given new life in the form of re-using the fabric in a new piece of clothing. A while ago, I heard from a friend that H&M has an eco-friendly incentive where shoppers can donate a bag of unwanted and worn-out clothing in exchange for a voucher which can be used to buy new clothing from the H&M stores.  Pre-loved clothing will then go through one of their 3 processes: Re-wear (wearable clothes are marketed as second-hand clothing), Reuse (if the clothes or textiles are not suitable for re-wear they’re turned into other products, such as remake collections or cleaning cloths) or Recycle (a...

Week 4 Blog On Wednesday, 10 November,   I took a trip to the Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve with some of my friends to document videos and photographs for the ConSus Field Trip 1 vlog assignment. During our visit, it was quite disheartening to see that many visitors have simply thrown trash around the reserve with disregard for the wetland reserve and how their actions will have negative effects on the organisms living there. As seen from the pictures above, litter such as plastic bags and bottles was casually left behind by the visitors. I feel that it is quite ironic that even though Singapore is known to be a clean "garden city" internationally still faces a big issue of littering and not cleaning up after ourselves.  Although I did not pick up trash while I was there, I feel that I can do what some of the Japanese people do, that is, carry an empty plastic bag around with me at all times, preventing myself from leaving any trash behind and for picking up any stray trash I ...