The Matcha Initiative
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Label for Recycling (L4R) is an exciting organisation which aims to answer the following question: is this packaging recyclable in the context of Singapore? L4R equips brand owners and manufacturers with tools to design truly recyclable packaging in Singapore and labels to make recycling easy for consumers.
L4R gathers experts from the two ends of the value chain: from the packaging design and manufacturing to the waste collection and recycling. L4R administers the Packaging Recyclability Evaluation Portal (PREP) which provides an evidence-based approach to the recyclability assessment of consumer good packaging.
On one end, brand owners and manufacturers can make evidence-based decisions on how to improve the recyclability of their packaging. On the other end, consumers can rely on an easy-to-understand label and recycle right. Together, each stakeholder can eventually close the loop on waste.
We are seeing more and more labelling initiatives around the world with the aim to provide better information to consumers. Unfortunately, a combination of lack of standardisation, poor design, and conflicting messaging, has created a lot of confusion for both consumers and companies.
L4R aims to address all three challenges by promoting the PREP labelling scheme which is currently used in Australia and New Zealand. A centralised organisation can then ensure the proper use of the labels and build trust by the consumer. The PREP labelling scheme has been tested for several years and proved to be easily recognised and understood by consumers. Therefore, it provides clear and transparent information on how to dispose of or recycle pieces of packaging.
We hope that this initiative will eventually become a standard in Southeast Asia.
In 2019, I did two interventions at the ACS International School. As a result of these interventions, and thanks to the leadership of the educational and management teams, the school has implemented several opportunities to improve the use of resources, which include:
In 2020, we conducted a full-scale waste audit for a manufacturer in Singapore. As a result of this in-depth investigation, we identified several opportunities which could save 4 times their annual waste collection costs with a payback below 2 years. Such opportunities included alternative packaging for internal operations (resulting in a reduction of purchase of packaging), alternative outlets for their recyclables (increasing the value of their discards), and technologies upgrade to optimise the use of their consumables. This was a very exciting project, and we were glad to work with their team. They were very engaged and started implementing some of our recommendations within a few months after the presentation of our report.