I have been close to nature since a young age, growing up in the countryside and being surrounded by animals my entire life. After moving to Singapore in 2018, I was overwhelmed by the abundance of waste such a small but largely very wealthy country generated, and the waste system appeared to me very disorganized.  

This caused me to undergo some kind of personal awareness and shift in mindset whereby I knew that this was something I couldn't close my eyes on for much longer. I pretty much started a plant based diet overnight and started volunteering at Zero Waste SG. I began conducting talks at corporate events and participated in programmes to educate others on the issue.

Following this, I launched barePack, a container-sharing economy for takeaway food, and led the initiative even during circuit breaker, partnering with Foodpanda, Deliveroo and Grab delivery. Along the way, I got involved in the development of other sustainability businesses and startup incubators in Singapore. 

I’m passionate about reuse models and circularity’s application across industries, as well as how they could transform the landscape of how materials and resources are utilised. I have even conducted training for the SG Packaging Federation, an obvious example, but almost every business is concerned by materials.

TaF.tc is instrumental in shaping new designers and how the industry will look in the future. I designed a tailored curriculum regarding sustainable design to train fashion industry professionals, aiming to teach about materials, as well as different aspects and facades of sustainability beyond just better materials.

I feel my responsibilities there are to redesign sustainable content that feeds into different modules at Taf.tc. My goal is to enlighten students and make them connect to the content I teach to any other module, i.e., integrating sustainability instead of compartmentalising it and separating it from other aspects of fashion. 

Hopefully, what they take away from it is that they should be thinking about these principles at the back of their mind across every aspect of their diploma and learning, in every single thing that they do.  This makes it more challenging and requires more reflection and problem solving, and that, in my opinion, makes it a more exciting and worthy goal to pursue.

There are similarities between them. Younger students new to the industry come in with dreams of creating their own brand, but some of those also want to do something for the planet - not all, but some. While fashion is mostly a consumer industry, it’s still perceived as a creative industry so it’s not surprising to see that still reflected today in the students’ motivation to study. The school welcomed students from a partner French school last month, we showed them around manufacturing sites in Malaysia and honestly their reactions weren’t different to those I’d have seen in my own graduating class in 2012. 

The questions that are brought up are a bit different though. Ten years ago, we never talked about the impact of fashion on the industry - except perhaps about material wastage in terms of monetary loss. We deplored the rise of “Made in China”, its reputation for poor quality and advocated for local quality made clothes but it wasn’t about ethics. Now, there is more focus and concern over the environmental impact of material wastage, as well as recycling partners, turning  waste streams into feedstock and considerations for the people involved. So, there’s more of a focus and interest in sustainability now overall. 

I would have liked to have had access to transparency on whom I was working with and where the materials came from: fashion is an opaque line of work in most companies, i.e. outsourcing certain processes and materials, hence there was no insight as to what impact you have in production. 

I was largely (even blissfully) unaware of different aspects of sustainability: if you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you improve? I only understood that some polyesters were better than others, i.e. recycled vs non-recycled. I was not made to question the materials, and in fact these were not necessarily perceived as worth my (paid) time.