== this article was originally written in April 2011 ==

 

a colleague commented that the environmental scene in singapore is driven by a group of well-educated young adults, most probably with overseas experience – yuppies, in a sense – and that a  breakthrough in raising the level of environmental consciousness amongst singaporeans could be done if only some ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle’ from the heartlands would be identified to front the environmental cause.

 

well, as a start, i’d like to recommend my grandfather as one unsung environmental hero. as far as i can remember, my grandfather has always been quite green – he gardens (has green thumbs), knows how to make and repair things (thereby reducing wastage), is compassionate, and is popular (he is well-known in the neighbourhood as he used to take frequent walks around the nieghbourhood)! he sorts the newspaper for the karang guni man, and in recent years he is the recycling representative of our house, sorting the recyclables before they are collected by sembcorp. although he is no longer quite as mobile, he inspired in my brother and me a respect for cycling, as this was how he commuted to work when he was still working. of course, being human, he does possess some flaws.

 

however, one of the most splendid comments that he made was after my field research in vietnam. shortly after returning from the airport, i shared with him some pictures which i took of the students’ pilot farms in the farmers’ field school, and also some pictures of the rice fields in the village where we spent about eight days collecting some data. my ahgong must have been inspired by the many pictures of greenery, the rice fields, and the rice plants, that he started to recount his childhood days: he had gone back to shantou, china, to visit his uncles and relatives when he was about five, and had such a good unrestrained time playing in the fields. and then he said, “in the past, we used human faeces to fertilise the fields. today in singapore, we don’t do that, the singapore government does not know how to do things.”

 

now, my granddad is not known to be opposed to the authorities – he has quite a placid character – but perhaps he was lamenting how sterile and uncreative a society we have become, that we have stopped observing the cycles and interconnections in nature, and have thereby extracted human society from the functionings of nature (or vice versa, depending on your philosophy). in today’s society where the availability of resources such as phosphorus is becoming a worry, and where more people such as dr james bernard (winner of the 2011 LKY water prize) are championing using human waste as fertilisers to improve agricultural production, my ahgong’s comment is apt yet supremely insightful. it was a timely comment in the context of today’s environmental problems, yet it originated from a good 82 years of wisdom embedded in my granddad, who is not the most privy to environmental debates mostly conducted in english. that this comment came from my granddad made me feel extremely proud.