Singapore lauches "green" factory

Source:Xinhua Published: 2013-10-18 9:54:56

Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam officially launched the city state 's first "green" factory on Thursday.

The building, known as Greenhub, has a nondescript exterior. Its self-tinting windows act as a natural cooler, regulating excess sunlight and heat. The solar panels on the rooftop help offset the office space's annual energy consumption of 160,000 kilowatt hours per year. The excess electricity generated will be sold to Singapore Power.

It embraces environmentally friendly processes all the way from its construction down to its daily operations.

It is the first industrial building in Singapore to quantify its carbon footprint during the construction phase, in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, a unit of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

The building, which costs 20 million Singapore dollars (16 million US dollars), houses the warehouse and office space of Greenpac in its 18,000 square meter premises.

Greenpac offers redesigned packaging solutions that encourage environmental sustainability. The crates that the company uses to transport their packages are made from processed wood sourced from ecologically sustainable forests.

Susan Chong, chief executive officer of Greenpac, said the company looks at using the right sustainable material so as to reduce the challenge in disposing the waste.

"We are constantly looking at waste management and upstream - how we can use less and generate less waste," she said.

Tharman said Greenpac is a good example of how environmental protection can be a commercial strategy as well.

"You've done it in a way which shows how many other companies can get commercial advantage through environmental value, through environmental protection as a commercial strategy but the core of it is innovation," he said.

Posted in: Green

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