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01 Cuifen and friends from the Collective.
02 Han Jing in the plantation.
Instead, I grew to appreciate the park and how we were blessed with abundant leaves that could be readily used to make compost. The compost we made had the fragrance of the rainforest.
As we shared how we make compost with more people, growers like Alan Tong and Tang Hung Bun helped us understand that composting food scraps would introduce elements needed for growing food, as well as good bacteria for a healthy soil ecosystem. After experimenting with small amounts of food scraps, we invited neighbours to contribute. We now have 15 households contributing food scraps on a weekly basis. Neighbours are engaged at our weekly gardening sessions, via our estate’s Facebook Group, and also at our estate’s family events.
What’s next for you?
CF The success of turning the dream into reality gave me much courage and energy to do more. I went on to start other initiatives, such as Foodscape Collective. I was also invited to administer the Journey to Zero Waste Facebook group. Yet, am I a ‘zero-waster’? I’d say, ‘not yet’. Zero waste is a concept I’m still learning. I found that it has been helpful to have a singular
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focus, e.g. composting, as a way to make empowering choices. It has been helpful to have the social backing of supportive communities.
For the coming year, I'll be working with some members of the Collective to bring some insights on community composting to more neighbourhoods. We are also looking to bring zero food waste practices to more schools and businesses.
Toh Han Jing Community Builder & Educator
What got you started?
HJ It all kicked off when I was studying Sociology in NTU. There was a module on imbalances in power, and my paper was centred around waste issues. From then on, I fell into a rabbit hole as I learnt more and more about the terrors of waste and how much food waste was generated. I knew I had to do something, but it felt too difficult to change the world, so I decided that I wanted to work on reducing my own food waste first.
How did you go about doing so?
HJ I started composting along my HDB corridor! I found out about composting through Google, and I felt like it was one of the key things that would help me reduce my waste at home. However, I soon found out that the composting guides online are not really cut out for Singapore’s climate or HDBs. HDB dwellers live in pretty tight proximity to our neighbours, and we generally know better than to create a stinky mess and upset one another. Besides that, the only composting information I found online were about using these expensive bins which my family could not afford.
Given the lack of information, I decided that the best thing I could
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