eportfolio 5

The group I have chosen to summarize for this e-portfolio post is Alvin’s group and the question they have chosen is whether their home country support Kirchhoff’s claim that collaborative effort by industry, academia, and government will promote the use of green chemistry technologies that are necessary to achieve a sustainable society and why.

I think the way they use to approach the problem was very unique. Instead of assigning different roles of perspective and look at the issues from different point of view, they split up the question into little parts and have each speaker talk about the definition and their perspective. I find it to be extremely interesting and useful as it tends to explain very clearly to the audience the questions and their point of view.

First up, we have Alvin as the moderator, introducing the questions, members and their way of approach. Soon after, we have Shao Yi explaining to us about the term green chemistry. He gave the definition of green chemistry as a sustainable chemistry in which the design and production reduces the use of dangerous material or chemical. He soon gave some examples of the hazardous chemical such as CFCs and fossil fuel. Also, difference between green chemistry and green technology was pointed out by him. Thereafter, he went on introducing biocatalyst, an example of green chemistry, and he explain how it help the environment, for example, replacing organic solvent, lowering temperature needed for certain processes.

Up next, we have EE Ming to explain to us what a sustainable society is. A sustainable society in his term is to maintain the state of high quality of life while working within the limits of Mother Nature, a society of just and equality and where everyone gets opportunity to reach to their potential. He went on to talk about Singapore and compare and contrast with his ideal sustainable society. Some of the similarities are that Singapore has a high quality of living, multi-racial, just and equal and plenty of chances for people to strive for the best. However, in his view, Singapore has not reach the standard of a sustainable society due to its lack of natural resources, lack of usage of green chemistry and there is more work to be done for Singapore.

Lastly, we have Sean to talk about how the three different parties (the government, industry and the academia) can work together in achieving a sustainable society. In his view, the government should act like a middle man, they should send talents and scouts to learn more knowledge and technology and transfer the knowledge to the academia to let them research and develop on it. Once research is done, the academia will feedback to the government and the government will pass down the policy to the industry, lastly the industry should feedback to the government and in a way, this act like a cycle until sustainable society is achieved. However, this method has a few disadvantages as there are too much government control, the industry will not be able to carry out their own research and development which will slow the progress towards sustainable society. Also, the government will tend to focus on immediate issues such as financial crisis and in turn will again slow the whole progress.

Alvin went ahead to conclude their group discussion and agree that collaborative effort by industry, academia, and government will promote the use of green chemistry and go towards a sustainable society. However, the process would be slow and enduring ones. One day, I would hope to see that my country reach the stage of sustainable society through the use of green chemistry. Till then, we should do our part in achieving this.