I am glad to be here this morning to share your enthusiasm for helping to minimise waste through the voluntary collection of waste paper and used clothing. I am told that a total of 85 schools had taken part and had collected a total of 145,800 kg of waste paper and 7,300 kg of used clothing. This is equivalent to about 20 truckloads of waste paper and 1 truckload of used clothing! So competition aside, I would like to congratulate all of you for having made a positive impact on reducing the amount of waste going to our disposal sites through your hard work. I hope that after this competition, you will continue to think about how you can help to minimise waste at home, in school or at work in future and put your thoughts to action.

I am sure those of you who had participated in this competition had enjoyed interacting with one another, be it planning and going out to do the collection or designing and building the recycled material model. The competitive element could have helped to stoke and keep up the enthusiasm, especially when the going got tough. Nevertheless, I think you would all agree that you had chosen to participate because you had believed that this was a worthwhile project to undertake, especially when the money raised through the collection would be for the benefit of some underprivileged children. I hope this competition has also made you realise just how wasteful we are and how with a little effort, we could all help to reduce waste through a less wasteful lifestyle, think of creative new uses for waste materials and segregate waste that can be collected or sent for recycling.

One can never be too young to learn how to minimise waste as part of an integral approach to handling the huge amount of waste we generate each day. Although we have consistently chalked up a recycling rate of about 40% each year, much of the waste that is recycled comes from industries. We can all help to lighten the disposal burden on the nation if our populace also make an effort to minimise their waste output. In this way, we can conserve the little land we have for landfilling of the waste and delay the need to construct more expensive incineration plants to deal with the mounting waste. We have to continue to work hard in this regard so that we can leave our future generations with a legacy of good environmental management.

I would like to thank BP Singapore for their kind sponsorship of this event and for raising close to $25,000 for charity. I would also like to commend NTU Earthlink for their efforts in organising this competition. I am glad that BP Singapore and NTU Earthlink have continued with their efforts to reach out to the greater community, such as through the schools, using these innovative and creative approaches.

Finally, I would like to congratulate all of you once again for your endeavour and creative efforts shown in this competition and hope that all of you would continue to participate actively in keeping our living environment clean and green.

Thank you.