Conversations

Scientists around the world raced at lightning speed to produce COVID-19 vaccines that are safe for millions of people worldwide. Indonesian scientist Carina Joe was one of them.

Bjorn took a leap of faith after 10 years of working in the digital marketing industry to explore a more sustainable lifestyle. His decision led him to a soul-searching journey across the United Kingdom, Spain, and Japan, where he learned to grow food in organic agricultural farms.

When Bjorn returned home, he found underutilised spaces and incorporated urban farms into Singapore’s cityscape. In 2012, he co-founded Edible Garden City with the goal of improving sustainability in local food production. It began with one restaurant garden for chefs that was driven by the global farm- to-table movement. Edible City has now built more than 260 urban gardens across Singapore. The gardens also serve as an inclusive community hub, providing green spaces for people to learn and connect with nature.

Seeing massive amounts of fresh produce thrown away in Singapore’s wet markets motivated Han Jing to help reduce food waste. She started composting seven years ago, when she was still a student at Nanyang Technological University.

Family and friends soon followed suit, composting and reducing their own food waste. Han Jing also grows her own food and promotes native edible plants and sustainable soil farming. She teaches others how to “grow consciously, cook consciously, and trash consciously” through her web platform and social media handle, Little Green Chef.

Agung founded Surplus, an app that enables food retailers to sell their overstock or imperfect products to help limit food waste in Indonesia. Indonesia is the second-largest producer of food waste per capita in the world, producing around 23-48 million tons of food waste per year.

This amount of food can feed 61 to 125 million people. Food loss and waste also contribute to around 7.29 per cent of Indonesia’s average greenhouse gas emissions and correspond to 213 to 551 trillion Indonesian rupiah in annual economic losses.

Kotchakorn Voraakhom is on a mission to save her hometown, Bangkok, from the worst of environmental degradation. Armed with a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University in the United States, Kotch established a landscape architecture firm, Landprocess, to pursue her aesthetic goal of blending modern design with natural systems. She also founded Porous City Network, a social enterprise that focuses on addressing urban environmental problems in cities across Southeast Asia by engaging local communities.

Sharima’s passion and commitment to the field of social work shines through, whether she is amid the aftermath of a typhoon or flood or in the classroom mentoring the next cohort of social workers.