Asia Pacific Social Innovation Partnership Award Winners Discuss Biosphere Sustainability & The Circular Economy
With the gradual increase of global risks, how can we develop innovative practices to ensure a future where sustainability will become mainstream? The Asia Pacific Social Innovation Partnership Award is established to explore dynamic social innovation models in the Asia Pacific and to motivate more change-makers to contribute to social innovation, discovering and celebrating social innovation partnerships that connect diverse stakeholders and make significant social impacts. Partnership cases are required to set the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs) as their core value.
The award sets motivating social innovation partnerships as its purpose, integrating 17 SDGs sorted into three categories, Biosphere Sustainability, Inclusive Business and Social Prosperity. Three winners were chosen from each category and there was one Special Jury Prize chosen by the judging panel.
The purpose of the Biosphere Sustainability Award is to encourage cases of social innovation partnerships devoted to environmental protection and sustainability, acknowledging that a favorable natural environment is fundamental to all human activities. The highly related corresponding SDGs are SDG6: Clean Water and Sanitation, SDG13: Climate Action, SDG14: Life below Water, and SDG15: Life on Land.
APSIPA Biosphere Sustainability Winners
Susan Lin
COO, GIVE543
Susan Lin is very much inspired by the vision of GIVE543 and she currently serves as COO of GIVE543, working with the founding team to balance the ideal and business aspects in order for the company to be sustainable.
The task was a challenging one, because GIVE543’s previous business model did not include any direct source of income. Many people mistook GIVE543 as an NPO, instead of a company. Susan facilitated the process of mapping and reshaping GIVE543’s business model and pushed forward an innovative and unique B2B2C service, LOVE BOX (aka surrogate giving service), which is a milestone and now a major income source for GIVE543.
Susan and the founding members aspire to create a successful role model among social enterprises and encourage more young people to save the world with great ideas!
Lisa Loo
CEO, BottLess
Lisa Loo oversees the innovation of new ideas to address Hong Kong’s urban social issues, including sustainability and community issues, and leads incubation efforts for over 20 early-stage social innovation organisations to grow these companies from idea stage to self-sustainability while pursuing a social mission. She has also spearheaded collaboration efforts with over 20 corporate partners to strategise and execute social innovation projects.
Lisa is the CEO of BottLess, an impact business with the mission of innovating holistic solutions for corporates and organisations to address their plastic challenge with accessible, adaptable and actionable steps for everyday consumers to adopt a zero-waste lifestyle. For her work with BottLess, Lisa was recently awarded the Eco Innovator Award in the Women Eco Game Changer Awards by the Global Green Economic Forum.
Dr. Siddeek Ahmed
Eram Scientific Solutions
Dr. Siddeek Ahmed is the Managing Director of Eram Group, which is a power house in Industrial Contracting, Project Management Solutions, Automotive, Health Care, Travel, IT, Manufacturing, Power Electronics, Trading, Floor Covering, Product representation & other commercial services.
Dr. Siddeek leads one of the region's most diverse conglomerates, with over 40 plus entities spread across 16 countries. He is credited with key business promotion initiatives in India, Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, Kingdom Of Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Italy, Kuwait, South Korea, Malaysia, USA, Oman, Thailand, China, Tanzania and Philippines.
He is also a philanthropist, and treats this facet of his life just as passionately. Eram Group under his able leadership, is committed to society and social causes. The group invests its resources in making the world a better place through efforts to promote education, improve health and sanitation, empower youth and women, through its own charitable ventures and in collaboration with humanitarian organisations such as the United Nations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Governments and NGOs.
Highlights from the Panel
(listen to the podcast for full details)
[Tom Allen] - Could you please share a little bit about your projects, the impact they're creating, and what led to your passion in social innovation? Lisa, we might pass on to you first.
[Lisa Loo] - Thank you for having me here today. I think it is a common problem in lots of areas where people are getting more reliant on single use plastics. Unfortunately, Hong Kong is no exception to this, and the consciousness of the Hong Kong people towards environmental issues, especially millennials, has increased in Hong Kong, and there are quite a lot of keen groups in Hong Kong.
But we find there is a lack of easy, accessible, and holistic solutions for people to lead a plastic free lifestyle. That's why we, from Bottless, came here, and Bottless was set up in 2015 as an impact venture in Hong Kong.
Our vision is to change the game of plastic consumption by working with partners who shape everyday consumption choices to reduce the plastic problem at the source. We are the first holistic platform with one stop solutions, using in-house centralised dishwashing facilities and a logistics network in Hong Kong.
Our portfolio ranges from water solutions to reusable cups and utensils for events and corporate functions, and we also act as an agent to connect and facilitate partnerships between different partners to provide solutions, including sourcing operations, media, and PR line-ups.
Our solutions have already been applied in various events, including marathons, bizarres, food expos, concerts, and different kinds of sports events in Hong Kong. Let me give you more examples. Last year, we worked together with Rugby Union, and we successfully introduced reusable cups at the Hong Kong Sevens, which is a three-day event with over 120,000 spectators, and 300,000 single use plastic cups were saved from our landfills. It's like a whole solution and sharing economy model, because we are encouraging people and showing [them] one way to reduce or minimise [waste].
BottLess.
But at the same time, you don't necessarily need to own your own set of utensils or cups. That's why our set up is a demonstration of the sharing economy. For example, the cups that were being used for the Rugby Sevens, there was no logo being printed on them. That means we encourage other organisers to use the cups again at other sporting events. We have directly impacted people by saving over 500,000 single use plastic items and have had 700,000 participants. In Hong Kong we have worked with over 50 business partners, and apart from this kind of impact, we have been happy to see that we have changed the norm or expectation, because we have introduced and made people know that zero waste event operations are feasible in Hong Kong.
We have lifted up the expectations of corporates or organisers, and even the people who are joining the events, so that they can all look for different kinds of civil waste solutions. That's something that we are very glad to [have been able to introduce]; setting the new standards of event operations.
Congratulations on how far you've come with Bottless.
Let's hand over to you, Susan. You are a big part of GIVE543. Tell us a little bit more about this project and the impact that it's creating?
[Susan Lin] - Hi everyone, it's my pleasure to introduce to you the platform we are creating called GIVE543. In fact, GIVE543 is actually Taiwanese dialect, and it means 'anything'. It means whatever you have, you can choose to give away if you are not using it. This platform is the only unconditional sharing platform in the world. Why did we create this platform?
It's because we want to see everything already being made to be fully utilised, and in order to make all the things flow freely, we need to turn people's attention from price to value. If no one is using something, it has no value. That's why we insist on our platform; there's no bidding or swapping. We want to break the concept of price.
Finally, it requires no fee at all, the platform is affordable and accessible to everyone. Based on this very unique mechanism, about 85% of the items posted on GIVE543 are able to find a new home. They can flow from people who no longer use them, to those who need them the most. People give away almost anything, just like our name suggests. It can be very small things such as reward points, and some people are collecting these reward points to maybe claim a prize, and maybe you just need one more. It could also be as huge as a piano; we have already seen more than 200 pianos shared on the platform.
Some of the gifts are very interesting too. For example, some people are offering their skills. Like a gentleman who is offering his skills of fixing computers. He helps people to fix their computers and he sends it back to the people. We think that is very interesting because when the computer is reborn, ‘Mr. Fix it’ gains this sense of achievement and the owner saves the computer from being trashed.
It's a very friendly practice to the environment. We even launched a service called “Love Box” to corporates, to help their employees give away things, and at the same time to encourage corporates to be more responsible to the environment. By sharing things, we can reduce waste and protect the environment.
During the past 11 years of our operations, over 3.7 million items have been circulated and reused, and it's just in Taiwan. We already reduced over 7 million kilograms of carbon dioxide. You can’t really imagine that if this model was duplicated around the world what impact we could create. Our practice not only benefits the environment because these idling items become gifts and they travel to every corner of society. It's carrying the love and the good intention from the givers.
We believe when things can circulate freely this way, and everything is fully utilised, we can have a better environment and we can have a better atmosphere in our society.
Sounds like you're making some fantastic impact there Susan.
Let's cross to you Bincy, you're from Eram Scientific Solutions. Tell us a little bit more about what you do, and the impact you're creating?
[Bincy Baby] - Hello everyone, thank you. Eram Scientific Solutions is an R&D social enterprise under the Eram Group. We are based out of India, Kerala State, and we actually started this whole activity around water and sanitation around 10 years back. That was when more than half of India's population did not have facilities for water sanitation, it's very prevalent in India. When we studied the very critical issue of sanitation, we found that there were three inherent challenges in sanitation. One was no availability of water or other sources so that people could use toilets on a regular basis.
The second was non availability, or a stigma associated with people working in sanitation. There was a lot dividing that. The third one was the lack of accountability. Though there were toilets, it was not possible to see whether they were actually used.
We tried to address all those challenges, using information and communication technology and mobile technology at that time. We came up with this whole unique idea of electronic toilets. The electronic toilet is nothing but a self-cleaning toilet, but they don't have any interfaces for the user. Actually, these technologies are used to manage how a public toilet can be best utilised and can be installed with public money.
Eram Scientific Solutions e-toilet.
This journey has been very long, and we had a lot of learnings as we went along, and we have reached a stage where now we have around 4,000 plus electronic toilets across India and the Middle East, with 12 million users and around 15,000 usages per day. We also are not just a company or an organisation which sells toilets alone, but we take up a lot of research activities around social impact creation. We partner with agencies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are also a part of the Toilet Board Coalition. We've had around 50 plus awards and recognitions across the world.
Our mission is to be a pioneer in developing scientific solutions in multiple domains of technologies and water. Sanitation is one of the most important areas which we have taken up. What we are trying to do is go ahead in the direction where the toilets are not a self-standing solution for the whole issue of wash water and sanitation.
But we would like to look at it as a comprehensive approach to the safe disposal of waste, so that the waste management solutions are self-contained. It is not like you transfer the waste to a different location and that gets treated and then that needs to be disposed. We also look into how to regenerate the resources, as water is an extremely critical resource now. Through our technology, we can actually utilise the 100% clean, pathogen free water, and relay it back to the toilet.
We can in a way have a business model and revenue generation options. It's then how can we integrate entrepreneurship and development into these water sanitation technologies and therefore ensure sustainability of operations.
It sounds like you're doing some great work. I think winning this APSIPA highlights all of your dedication and hard work and skills to innovate.
What are all of your observations of the social innovation movements in your respective countries and further afield, and where do you see key opportunities and the next steps. We might start with you, Lisa, where you're based out of Hong Kong. Where are these opportunities?
[Lisa Loo] - I think this social innovation trend, this kind of concept or wording [is something] I didn't hear at all when I was young. But I think millennials now are very much eager to look for these kinds of concepts and models. Because in the past three years the number of social enterprises in Hong Kong has increased more than 15%. A lot of people want to start their own businesses. They always make their start-ups sustainable, and they also look for the technical parts of the social elements. I think the ‘shared value’ concept has also been in start-ups in Hong Kong. Apart from that, the corporates are also eager to adopt the shared value concept into their company's strategy.
GIVE543.
In these past few years, a lot of the corporates have also come to us, and just like any advisor, sought how to balance their business strategy, plus create shared value and strategies in addressing the community or environmental issues.
In fact, we believe after COVID, people are eager to see change because change brings hope. It is expected that this is the right moment to start new. For us and Bottless, we were focusing more on the events to start with, but as you know, COVID makes a lot of events very difficult to hold, or even had them cancelled entirely. That's why we are also pushing to spread, and to think about how to speed up our movement through making it city-wide.
For example, our sharing economy model can be applied to their daily lives among restaurants or cafes. When people buy a coffee, they don't need to necessarily use disposable paper cups, which also have a lot of plastic lamination. This kind of concept of how to make and apply reusable concepts to our daily life is something that is pushing us very fast. We hope next time we talk, we can share more on this.
Fantastic, thank you Lisa.
What about yourself, Susan? You're based in Taiwan. Where do you see some key opportunities and what are your observations of the social innovation movement?
[Susan Lin] - Thank you, Tom. Some of my observations include the circular economy and the sharing economy, because no one talked about this 10 years ago when we founded our platform. A lot of pre-education and a lot of efforts are needed before people are motivated to act on the cause.
What we do is actually play a part in the circular economy. We try to create a loop in between redistribution and reusing, and we go around and around in the loop until finally the item reaches the end of its life cycle, to make sure it's not idling and it's fully utilised.
I think now in Taiwan, people are pretty much influenced by the Japanese ideas of clutter clearing or Tidy Up with Marie Kondo. In the past, when people lived difficult lives, they liked to own things. But now as we own too much, and everything seems so affordable, people start to realise the consequences of having too much.
In Taiwan, people are starting to pursue the opposite direction, caring more about the experience with things rather than the ownership. I think this is good for society, the environment and it's also good for our business because it can further push our business, because we are totally in line with this trend.
GIVE543.
Thank you, Susan. There's some great insights there, it's great to really hear of that shift happening quite strongly in Taiwan as well.
Bincy, let's cross to you because you're based in India. Where do you see the social innovation movement right now, and where are the key opportunities?
[Bincy Baby] - In India, we are finding a very promising environment and social entrepreneurship development, because of the fact that there's a lot of awareness amongst the people, or in the case of millennials, people who are actually starting new enterprises.
There's a lot of support and promotion from the government, from education institutions towards social enterprises. The gap which we see is that most of these social enterprises, [are] addressing some of the social challenges.
We have seen working in the wash, water and sanitation sector, that this is around a $60 billion economy, which is coming up in India, and it's a circular sanitation economy with reuse and recycling of the waste generated from the target. We think that water and sanitation cannot be in the standalone social enterprise sector. We need to have more with various other fields like public health, hygiene, tourism, and the hospitality industry. There's a lot of synergy, which is possible in the social enterprise sector in India, and we look forward to networking and tying in with agencies and organisations which would like to make a very visible impact in the sector.
All of you I'm sure have learned so much on your journeys. What's one piece of advice that you would give to other social entrepreneurs or innovators who are really focusing on biosphere sustainability? Lisa?
[Lisa Loo] - When I think of one for sustainability, a lot of the problems we are now facing in the world are because of convenience, because people take convenience as their priority. They neglect what kind of damage we are creating for our planet.
I would say in our experience, we try to bring in a new model of lifestyle, to stop using or reducing the usage of disposable items. We always think ‘make the inconvenience as convenient as possible’. That means taking away the convenience of people’s life, but you put in something to help to make our lifestyle more sustainable.
BottLess.
But the most important thing is to make it try to be as convenient as possible, even though as compared to the disposable lifestyle, it might be less convenient.
Susan. What about yourself? What advice would you give?
[Susan Lin] - Thank you Tom. My advice to fellow innovators is to stay focused on the problem you want to solve. I think most social entrepreneurs are struggling to make ends meet. Sometimes you may see an opportunity you want to pursue, but it requires you to deviate from what you wanted to do in the beginning. It means you have to make compromises. In times like this, I would say try to find opportunities within your process, not outside of it, because only your vision can keep you going in the long run.
Thank you, that's great Susan.
Bincy, what have you learned on your journey? What advice would you give?
[Bincy Baby] - My advice would be that in this entire sector of social enterprise, we always find that we are lonely. You may not have anyone to look forward to or copy.
Let's go ahead in a fearless manner, focus on what we plan to do. Also, we have to be very disciplined with our financial resources, because that is one thing that will keep us back.
See how we can partner and find out the best partners who can help you through their investment, who also share the same vision. It's very important.
It's some great advice Bincy.
Let's finish off now with some books and resources that you would all recommend to our listeners. Lisa, what would you recommend?
[Lisa Loo] - Being a social innovator requires exploring the untold, and the path is not easy. But I think we need to feel that we are not alone. I would recommend to always check on different networks, like AVPN, or even Impact Boom which I think is also a very good platform to get to know what's going on in the whole landscape, and we can learn from each other. Another thing I think is also learning from social innovation competitions, not necessarily because of awards, I think it is for the experience and also to grow your network. It's something I would highly recommend to all your listeners.
Thanks for sharing Lisa, what about yourself Susan?
[Susan Lin] - I think many people, are more familiar with Marie Kondo and her Tidying Up with Marie Kondo show. However, in my field, if you want to learn more about the benefits of giving away things, I would recommend reading Dan-Sha-Ri by a Japanese author, Hideko Yamashita. ‘Dan’ means to refuse something you don't need, so don't let them into your house. ‘Sha’ is to look into what you already have, keep the things you really like and dispose those you don't like or don't care about, and ‘Ri’ means to separate you from the desire of ownership.
I think this book is more like the philosophy underlying all the other books or shows talking about organising your home or tidying up. When you do it, you can do it with awareness, so I think it's worth reading.
That sounds like a great resource there, Susan. Thank you.
Finally, Bincy, what books or resources would you recommend?
[Bincy Baby] - I've got a number of networks and platforms available online to whoever is interested in the water sanitation sector, like the Toilet Board Coalition, and of course in social enterprise I was really excited to read and know more about impactful enterprises. I recommend that as well. Onto the books, I don't have anything which is very particular about the industry, but there are two things which I heard a lot of insights from.
One was Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which actually gives us some insights into what the evolution of the human race has been. There is an instinct in us to network and collaborate and work together.
Eram Scientific Solutions e-toilet.
The second you may like, especially if you are an introvert but want to do something for the society is Quiet by Susan Cain. It's very good, this will give you a lot of confidence on why you are like that and get you the help to go ahead.
A huge thank you to all of you for sharing your really generous insights and time today. Congratulations on winning the APSIPA Biosphere Sustainability Award. It shows that you are making great progress and we look forward to tracking your progress into the future.
This content is sponsored by Small and Medium Enterprise Administration, Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan.
Books and Resources Recommended by panelists
From Lisa:
From Susan:
Dan-Sha-Ri by Hideko Yamashita.
