 I think we're a good color combination. Excellent. So you will let me know when. Good afternoon, everyone. And greetings to those of you who are tuning in for our live stream. Welcome to this panel discussion on Better Living Zero Waste, co-hosted by the World Economic Forum and Fortune Magazine. As we all know, Asia is the world's biggest producer of food and manufactured goods with a massive consumer base. But this growth comes with a cost as this region's greenhouse gas emissions and the waste that will produce continue to rise. That is why concerted efforts to design more sustainable production model and to shift consumer behavior are underway. So in today's discussion, we will explore how government and business leaders can work together to build an ecosystem, to invest in innovative technologies, and to promote responsible consumption. So a very brief self-introduction. My name is Fang Wang. I am the executive Shanghai duty editor at Fortune. I'm thrilled to be moderating this conversation. We have an excellent and incredibly diverse panel here today with us featuring voices from across the public and private sectors and from a wide range of industries. Before we dive in, I just want to remind our audience here and online that if you want to post any content and thoughts on social media, please use the hashtag AMNC23, which stands for annual meeting of new champions 23. Now let me briefly introduce our distinguished panelists. To my immediate left is Ms. Pullman Lowe, vice chairman and managing director Regal Hotels International, which is one of the largest hotel brands in greater China. To her left is Gilly Wong, chief executive Hong Kong consumer council. The Hong Kong government body charged with consumer rights protection. To her left is Stuart Oda, founder and chief executive officer, Alaska Life and agriculture technology company. To his left is Mr. Martin Weiss, chief executive officer, Hubert Berdermedia, one of Germany's largest media and technology companies. To his left is Mr. Tilmin Chang, chief executive officer, Sino-Singapore Tianjin Ecosystem Investment and Development Company, which I think is an intergovernment partnership between Singapore and China. A warm welcome to all of you. I want to turn to you first, Gilly, because we all know companies and the government of course play a crucial role in sustainable growth, which will cover a lot afterwards. But I want to come to you first because consumers are at the centre of this big cause. When we say better living, it's better living for them. And without their participation, without their awareness, nothing can be done. So you work for the Hong Kong Consumer Council. So how do you design a program that raises consumers awareness as part of your mission to give them to protect their rights? Is awareness part of their rights? Oh, definitely. You know, for any consumption, when you talk about what is sustainable or not sustainable, there is more of a marketplace. In a marketplace, there are two big players. On one side, obviously, is the trader. The other side is the consumer. And of course, surrounding it requires regulations and other stakeholders. But any imbalance of it, you know, will create problems or maybe disruptions, no matter if it's good or bad, to the whole marketplace. So one of the very important things to safeguard consumers is maintaining this balance. And going back to consumer rights, we are talking about very fundamental rights. They are talking about, you know, the safety of the products. We are talking about affordability. We are talking about whether there are sustainable means around material friendliness. Their rights to have information access. And also, in case of any problem, the right to redress. So these are, you know, very important right to consumers. So when we, no matter it's at the international level or maybe at the local level, to design a program to maintain this balance, one aspect of it is consumer education. Apart from advocating for the right regulations to protect, to regulate the market. Advocating for the right behaviour, for the trade. Consumer education pay a very big part because they have to empower themselves to be rational, logical and sensible in their decision making and in every purchase. So no matter you're talking about clothings, food, green products or maybe electrical items, whatever you think of, you know, in a household, if they have that education, if they have that knowledge, that will be far more easier in protecting them. Because if they can protect themselves, the dispute will sell them comes. But if they don't, you know, the dispute will come easily. So in terms of approach, there are many ways, you know, to do it. Using Hong Kong Consumer Council as an example, we put a lot of emphasis on information dissemination. So in our work, we have a very famous Choice magazine every month that we release product tests, results of many different kinds of products, giving all the tips, you know, to consumers when they make the purchase. Apart from that, you know, we put forward very big education programs, from the primary school, all the way to secondary school, the wrong-knowable ones, including the Mentally Handicap, together with the elderly, these are more wrong-knowable groups to help them, you know, to educate themselves. Furthermore, just in case, you know, any dispute to happen, we have a very big team in the market to conciliate different disputes. So every year, in terms of numbers, we're handling around 70,000 inquiries and 30,000 complaints every year, just trying to, you know, help to resolve all the disputes. Our resolution rate is about 70%, which is not bad already, but this is the last thing, you know, we want to do because we want happy transaction. We want to have a very sustainable and balanced economy, but things will not be that ideal, so that's why, you know, we need to have that very strong dispute resolution mechanism. And at the higher level globally, we are working on many evocacies to international bodies as well as governments. If you're talking about food, we are working closely with UN, the United Nations, at Consumers International, which is the World Federation of 200 members from 100 countries. That's actually what I'm going to dive into. Can you share with us a little bit about the sustainable food program that you were initiating? Sure, sustainable food, you know, we are all human beings. I'm sure we rely on food to survive. If you don't have good food or healthy food, probably you'll decorate a lot of problems to our healthcare system as well as the productivity of any economy, so food is very important. But unfortunately, it is not that ideal as well because we are facing the cost of living crisis and also the imbalance, the broken system of food. So at the international level, Consumers International are working with many major bodies like the UN. We are part of the UN food system dialogue. We are also in the crisis committee as well to look into the Ukraine war, how it impacts the food supply worldwide. And we are advocating for the balancing of the trade as well as the innovation of technology so that the consumers can have more affordable, safe system for that. And at the market level, Consumers International are also working closely with different agencies on consumer education about healthy diet. So going back to Hong Kong, one example that I quote before I close is, in the past three years, we doubled the resources on food tests. So we have probably around 35 tests conducted covering 1,300 samples. That creates a lot of noise. Whatever you can think of from coffee, infant formula, all the way to candied foods or even superfood, goji berries, which is very popular right now, we test everything. So that we offer informed information to consumers. That creates lots of interest in the market because the fine thing is what's striking. No one has the idea about coffee can be casino genic because of the cremates. So if you are a coffee drinker addicted to it, you better stop or maybe slow down, stuff like that. It's associated with the livelihood of people. They were concerned, they would be interested. That's how we empower them to behave better in their healthy diet. So at the end of the day, we generate a lot of media attention, not only in Hong Kong, but also in China as well. We're talking about 6,000 meter coverage and inside that is about 60 headline news. So by going through something that is highly relevant to consumers about their daily living, apart from the policy level, that will help to drive better empowerment to consumers. Well, I want to bring in an innovator in the food industry. Stuart, Alaska Life is pioneering some of the cutting edge agriculture technologies. When we talked last time in the preparation of this panel, I heard some fascinating data, statistics, how vertical farming can increase the efficiency and also the nutrition of food. Can you share with us a bit more? Yeah, sure, thank you so much. Maybe I'll build on what Gilly said, but I guess overall in order to build a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive food system, the agriculture industry and our company's focus is how can the industry make things more both affordable but also accessible. And so local sustainable food production needs to do a lot of work in order to make it easy for the consumer to make a decision. So food that is safer, healthier, and hopefully just as affordable. And so our company is focused kind of in two key areas. First, we build a turnkey vertical farm for customers that are looking to localize food production. So if it makes both economic and environmental sense, we want to help customers localize the food production. And then on kind of the smart side of things, we develop farm management software and AI enabled IoT devices to take conventional farms and really maximize their productivity and efficiency. And kind of the result of that on the vertical farming side because we're able to control so many aspects of production, we're able to reduce the water, the land and fertilizer use by up to 99%. We don't require any chemical pesticides and we don't need any GMOs. We've also vertical farming is very bright. You see a lot of LEDs. And so the conventional kind of thought is that it's very energy intensive but we've completed a very simple environmental impact study and we found that we can reduce carbon emissions per kg by up to 24% compared to imported fresh produce products. And so agricultural logistics is a huge emitter of carbon. And by localizing food production, by giving consumers the option, the access and the affordability to be able to purchase things that are local and more sustainable, we can also have a meaningful impact in reducing carbon emissions. And kind of the last thing is really to scale up the technology and really to democratize it. We have to take a lot of this specialized know-how out of the equation. And to that end, we're building one of the largest image data sets so that our AI models can understand plant health at a very kind of molecular photosynthetic level. And the goal here is that if we can make food production not only accessible from a product perspective but from a profession. So if anybody can enter the space just like you might work at a McDonald's or a fast food restaurant that anybody could be a successful commercial farmer that we can really meaningful, meaningfully scale up sustainable food production. And we can make it possible for more communities around the world to be in charge of their own food and nutritional security. So we're putting a lot of these efforts into these tool sets that we can deploy. A lot of our focus is actually in developing markets. So we're in China, we're in the Middle East. The kind of first developed market that we're entering is Japan. But trying to make these tools available and affordable and accessible for individuals and businesses that are operating in developing countries. Can you give us an example? Like you go to a building, right? It's the vertical farming like you work with a hotel, for example. How do you do it? Yeah, so we're our kind of maybe unique contribution to the industry is that our installations are incredibly flexible and they're modular. So if you have an open space and underutilized parking structure, we've converted it into a vertical farm before. We've integrated our indoor farms into restaurant corners and cafes. And so really any space that where food is consumed, we can produce it locally as well. And so we really wanna empower not just kind of this debate around consumer versus producer, but to be able to think about food being integrated into the cityscape in ways that hasn't existed in the past. And so right now we're doing a lot of discussions around integrating into residential communities, co-locating with supermarkets, integrating into hotels and other operations. And also kind of now more and more having food be kind of something that can co-locate with both educational facilities of schools as well as rehabilitation centers. So as part of somebody's mental and physical therapy that they might be able to use indoor farming as a way to not only produce food for their local community, but to get from their well-being's perspective as well. So if I were a restaurant owner and I want to use your technology, does it require a lot of capital? Yeah, so from that perspective, we have multiple models that we can work with. So if a customer doesn't have kind of the upfront capital, there's ways for us to finance the technology so that they can just integrate it into their operations. If they don't want a farm, we can provide the operational kind of support as well. You know, right now, what's really exciting is last year, we matched the capital and operational, we matched the operational and capital prosperity to glass houses. And this year, we're confident with a small variety of vegetables that will match the efficiency of a greenhouse. And next year, in developed markets, we'll match the efficiency of a field farm. And so what's really exciting about the technology is it's very exponential. And we're very confident that if you're purchasing imported fresh produce, that by localizing the production, we can reduce our costs. Right, so can you tell us a bit more about the nutrition increase with vertical farming? Yeah, I mean, nutrition is really kind of a direct function of freshness. So if something is fresh, most often, that's going to have much more nutritional value. One of the ways in which we are also kind of increasing nutritional value is because we can control all aspects of production, we can apply stress to the plants in a way that really maximizes nutritional value as well. So we can simulate drought conditions, flood conditions, extreme darkness, and high winds. And all these different stress, kind of both mechanical stress and these kinds of environmental stress that we can provide, can get the plant to react in ways that can become more nutritious. We can also change everything from the taste and texture as well, so customers that want something that's sweeter or spicier or softer, these are all things that we can do as well. And this is kind of also a way in which we can tailor our solutions to restaurants and hotels, but also a way for us to also contribute to things like reducing food waste. Sounds fascinating. So we do have a representative from the hotel industry. Paul, man, so the hotel industry is going to have a boom time after the post-pandemic era. So I'm sure you're ready for that. But at Regal Hotel, you put sustainability at the core of your operation. So could you share with us a little bit details of how you do to save water, energy, reduce food waste? What you do? Sure. As you say, we actually do embrace sustainability at the core because we feel that it's not just time to talk about it, but actually translate it into action. So we actually launched the first carbon neutral hotel called iClub 13 years ago. That's before I guess everyone started talking about ESG. And the way we did it was to really start with measuring the baseline. Because first, you have to be aware of the impact that you are causing to this earth. So we did that by engaging professional consultants and also building our in-house team to really look at exactly how we are affecting the world with our operations. And then we offset the remaining emissions. And I have to say that through these years, we have found that technology can really play a huge role. So in terms of energy management solutions, there have been more and more very advanced AI-powered systems that we can leverage on to really drive energy efficiency. And in fact, the more we can embrace big data and AI, the more we are able to predict energy consumption. And actually, a lot of people are under the misconception that you have to sacrifice your bottom line. But in fact, when you're willing to invest up front, there are very clear savings. Easily, you can save up to 20%. Above that, perhaps there's some diminishing returns. But still, we have to make sure that we are on this path to net zero. And in terms of water management, also there are very efficient systems that can help conserve water by predicting again consumption. And also, some faucets can actually deliver the same type of flow without using as much water. And in terms of waste management, globally, the hotel industry actually throws away a hundred billion worth of food. This is actually an alarming statistic in that, in fact, nine million people are still dying of hunger every year. A child dies of hunger every 10 seconds. And yet, we as in the more developed countries are throwing away all this wasted food because, again, I think we can do a better job in predicting food consumption. For example, there are some IoT technologies that we can use to install in the kitchens or even in restaurants to measure the amount of food that is thrown away. And in that way, we can better manage our inventory and also optimize our purchasing systems and also optimize the portion that we serve to our customers and also better plan our menu offerings. So also for waste management, there's a lot of very innovative technologies out there. This year, we entered into a partnership with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to develop a revolutionary BRICS technology that actually uses a combination of food waste and construction waste to produce eco-friendly BRICS that are actually 12 times harder than the original BRICS. And one ton can actually absorb two tons of carbon. So again, there are many ways that we can reduce the impact of our operations. And this year, we are also working with some international organizations to define the standards for net zero hotel operation. I think there are a number of green building standards out there, but instead of just focusing on the hardware, actually consumer behavior can make a huge difference. And that's where we can actually help with operation management. For example, at the university, there's a sustainable living solution that actually simply installs smart meters in the dormitories. So actually sometimes it doesn't involve rocket science. All it takes is awareness and the determination to actually minimize our impact. So by simply installing the meters, the students are able to reduce their energy consumption by over 60%. So again, I think as long as we are aware that we are obviously the source of the problem, but we can also be the solution. On that note, can I come back to Gili just very briefly? So we all know Hong Kong is the paradise for cuisine, right? But how do you design a program to educate the consumers about the food waste in particular, to reduce food waste? Is there any specific measures that you take? Yes, we do. In natural fact, that requires very collaborative efforts with the civil society, with the government, and also education to educated people about how much you need. Sometimes you're just too greedy to eat more, but in reality you don't need that much. So no matter it's the restaurants industries, in the past we have a course manual, we are advocating for only six crores, and also around mentally unfriendly food, we get rid of that, trying to make people understand what is healthy for them. I do believe that COVID did make a difference to people. Sometimes this kind of global crisis make people self-reflect again, their behaviour, whether it is right for the environment and right for their wellness. So it's getting more and more healthy, and when you talk about healthy, if you offer them the right information and also make it affordable to them, the behaviour will come. But of course they're still not the most ideal situation right now because people are still half educated and also affordability is one thing as well. Plus sometimes greenwashing is another issue that globally we have to address. No matter it's greenwashing or green ESG washing, those are the issues that we have to work with. So there are many, many things that we have to do, but fundamentally the education of the right, impartial, accurate and precise information to them and easy to understand to the public is very crucial for them to gradually change their behaviour. And according to our sustainable consumption behaviour study, making it accessible is very, very important and have the choices in the market is very important. The green labelling right now is an issue as well, so that's why we are also working very hard to look at the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of label, pinpointing different traders on how they could improve because sometimes it's just because of cost saving, they sell them, they review their nutrition label and also the information on the label which is undesirable, so we are also pinpointing that by matching that, you know, offering the right to the information to consumers, they will gradually change. Right, and I think on that note it's a good timing to bring on the representative from the media industry. Martin, you work for this German media company called Berda, which I think publishes a lot of titles in food, on food, is that right? That is absolutely right with the world's largest publisher of food magazines, yes. Right, so Gili just talked about how we should convey the message in an accurate way, right? And I think media plays a key role in this. So can you share with us your insights in some of the new trends in food industry, technologies, innovations and perhaps consumers' behaviour around food? Yeah, I mean, look, there's two different perspectives I'd like to draw upon after hearing about sort of regulation and production, now we come to the fun part, the cooking and actually eating. So we're very close to the meal now, everyone. So that's one perspective. The other is maybe a distinctly European perspective, which might be different to the Asian perspective that we're seeing. So, look, 30, 40 years ago, it was all about diversity in food, right? So the Brits had their shepherd pie and the Germans were eating their sausage and suddenly everybody was getting interested in food and suddenly it was about international cuisine, it was about discovering the world. And then eventually the topic of health started to matter. So the question is, what is it that you eat? We all remember, supersize me, we all remember debates about healthy nutrition and this is sort of the early 2000s when that was the big trend. And then I guess it was sort of from the 20 teens when the whole question of your carbon footprint really started to matter and it was all about getting food that is very locally produced, it's fresh locally produced food. And I guess that is where we currently are, it now sort of develops into new topic, which is longevity, where people are saying, I can really use food to lengthen my life and lead a healthy, happy life hopefully ever after. Now food alone isn't gonna get you there. But that is sort of the trend in which we're going. I think what you said is absolutely right, the consumer matters massively because yes, we need industrial solutions to the problems that we see to be able to react but at the end of the day we have consumer decisions and if the consumers accept plastic wrapping, low nutrition, nutritional value, stuff being shipped around half the world and really, really cheap food and all of that in combination we will never get the problem solved. So there will need to be some sort of education and you can do it from a public policy perspective as I guess you guys do but I think you can also do it from a narrative from the storytelling because it's actually quite something positive and people love to engage with it so there's already a lot of consumer awareness and food magazines for example, like other magazines, unlike other magazines, are actually not decreasing in print run, they're actually increasing in print run, food has become an ever more central part to our lives and around food waste. I mean, let me just give you one example. We are a media and tech company, we also invest in internet ventures and one of a very successful venture that we have is in the UK, a company called Oddbox. What they do is they fight food waste right at the start. So they basically take produce that will never make it to the supermarket just for optical reasons. They package that into a box and send it on a weekly basis to consumers so food waste is actually reduced at the source before it actually hits the cycle. So those I think are two interesting consumer trends that we're saying. I'm going to share with us with some cooking skills. We'll do that later, absolutely, very, very happy. My favorite lasagna recipe after the show. All right, okay. So let's broaden our discussions a little bit. I want to come to you, Tio. So Tianjin EcoCity is a partnership between Singapore and China. So I think you bring a very unique perspective you sort of cross the public and the private sectors. So could you tell us a bit more? I think Tianjin EcoCity is about 50 kilometres from 30 kilometres. So it's in the coastal area. Essentially you turned a piece of wasteland into a very liveable area for living, I mean for Tianjin residents. So tell us how did you, I mean, how you did it? What's it like now? First, some background as the G2G government project. This is quite unique. Singapore and China has got a few G2G projects over the last few decades. Tianjin EcoCity was started in 2008. If you recall, those were the times when China was a bit concerned about air pollution, water pollution, food security and so on. It started in 2009. 2008. That was when we were all the discussions about air pollution. And when they look at Singapore, Singapore is economically vibrant. It's a very small place. But at the same time, it has a lot of respect for the environment. It has done a lot for environmental protection, preservation and so on. And therefore the idea between the leaders of the two countries at the time was why not find a place, develop a city to show that we can grow economically while protecting and preserving the environment. And to make it even more challenging, we chose a place in the eastern corner of Tianjin that is essentially waste land and polluted waters at the time with only just some fishermen. So we took the place... So a lot of things were done in the last 15 years. You rehabilitated the land. We cleaned up the waters. We took the urban planning lessons from various parts of the world, including Singapore, and planned the city so that it is a very livable, very green, very sustainable city. For instance, one of the KPS that we have is that every resident in EcoCity should be within five minutes of walking distance to a park. And there are many park connectors connecting the various parks. We make sure they are greenery. We make good use of the rivers and the lakes. And we have planted a lot of trees. So today, the Tianjin EcoCity is, I would say, very successful. One of the more livable cities in China. We have many young families and also older folks because of the environment and the air and the water. So I think the demonstration here was that you can grow economically, you can make it into a nice living environment while also taking care of the greenery and the nature. And I think that was done. So in the last 15 years, we have... As a company, we have three roles. First, we are the platform between the two governments. So there are many things in the development of the city that depends on the government and not just the company. So we have drawing resources from the Chinese government, from the Singapore government. So for instance, in the early planning, we draw in experts who have dealt with pollution issues in Singapore and in China to do the rehabilitation. We brought in the urban planning experts to do the planning of the city. We brought in the people who are concerned about sustainability to set up a series of KPIs on how to have a sustainable city and so on. So that's the first role, being a platform to bring resources from both governments to make the city a livable place. The second role is to develop some of the buildings in the city. So we are a developer of residential properties. We are a developer of industrial properties, of commercial properties. And we are halfway through this project, we have got more land to develop. The third role is really to operate some of these facilities. So we're an operator of some industrial facilities and some commercial facilities. Right, so we will come to the expansion plan afterwards, but I'm just wondering whether you bring in private capital into this project and how does the private sector, I mean, collaborate with the government because we all know, I mean, the ecosystem where everybody is involved is really important in the sustainable growth. And also because only when you have like private sector participating in, you probably can have a more sustainable business model, right? If you want to scale it, I mean, in the context of urbanization, which I mean, a lot of Asian countries are still going through. So how does, I mean, the private and public sectors work together? So for the G2G projects between Singapore and China, I think one of the unique thing that Singapore government always insists on is that the project should be supported by the government with a vision that was set up by the government, but it should be implemented and executed by the private sector. So in the case of Tianjin, a joint venture was set up between a Singapore consortium and a Chinese consortium. On the Singapore side, it is led by Capital Corporation, which is one of the listed companies in Singapore. So it is purely private sector driven in that sense in terms of the capital injection, in terms of the implementation. And to join other resources, we will have joint ventures with other companies. So we have drawn in investors from Korea, from Japan, from the Philippines and so on, to do the development. So that's how we make use of private sector funding, investment, acumen, and maybe private sector expertise, while at the same time drawing upon the government's experience in terms of larger picture issues, urban planning, and so on and so forth. Right. So very quickly, has it been a commercially successful story? Yes, it has been. Good to know. So I want to come back to you, Gili, a little bit, because we do have a zero waste part of this theme of this panel. So, and we all know plastic waste is a big part of, I mean, consumer waste that we produce every day. So share with us a little bit about, I mean, how do you reduce plastic waste in Hong Kong? Wow, this is probably at your top. Start from the global picture first instead of swimming into Hong Kong. Plastic, to start with, the cost has been passing on to consumers unfairly, frankly speaking, because in the first place, if we think through the damage of plastic to the whole environment, if we get rid of it or maybe have the right ingredients, probably the cost will not be translated to all of us in this room or all the consumers. So it is quite unfair right now, but the whole world right now is chasing after time to mitigate the problem. So this is something very important we have to deal with, because no matter it's the physical plastic that we are touchable or maybe the micro plastic that we are absorbing in our body, in our blood, those are harming us every day. So at a global level, consumers international actually is working, actually is lobbying and negotiating with the UN about a plastic treaty for plastic waste reduction. It is a huge pollution, so... But the details, the devils is in the details, because I'm not sure every one of you have the experience of recycling plastic every day, but there are lots of frustration. Whether there's a label to help you to understand whether it's recyclable or not, secondly is how can you get rid of the labels on the bottle to ensure that it is recyclable? Even after you clean it, how you can put it into the right place to ensure your effort will not be wasted, it will be properly treated. Stuff like that, if it's not transparent, not properly done, it will frustrate consumers a lot. And at the end, what will happen is they either do less or just give up. For many surveys in the world, saying that many consumers are very frustrated, so at the global level in the negotiation of the global treaty, there are a few very important things that have to be harmonized across the world. The first thing is about the information provision on the label by itself, making sure that it's standardized that everyone can have an easy understanding on how to follow the instruction and make sure it is right. Second thing is about the definition of green and innovation, because one country, your definition of green versus the other is very different. So that requires a huge harmonization around the world to ensure this consistency. And thirdly, it's about the trade practices as well, because the replaceable products have to exist. In actual fact, even when we are talking about many replaceable products, in reality, after testing, they are also containing harmful substances to the world. So it's not 100% green in reality. So how we can continuously improve that to make it total green to consumers, that is very important and that has to be done at the international level. But the local level, of course, every government is tracing out the time right now. So one thing is to consistently, persistently and actively involve in all the government consultations about the policies, advising them what makes sense to consumers, what are the unclear points and also about the incentive to support consumer behavior, to follow, to manage the plastic waste. So this is one area, and another area is consumer education. If every one of us pledged not to touch plastic in your takeaway, in your everyday life, that will make a difference as well. Even taking me, for example, I just stopped using plastic for my takeaway. I just choose shops or restaurants that allow me to bring my glass container and then you put food into my container, then I would patronize that shop. So this is simple behavior that everyone can behave, but that requires a huge amount of effort and education for everyone to follow. And finally, according to the survey we did in Hong Kong, the sharing of success to the public is very important. I don't want to waste my effort. I want to know my effort got rewarded for the better benefit of the whole community and best with financial incentive. So if I can get rewarded with certain gifts, redemption of green products, green coupons or credits, that I can continuously motivate my behavior, that will be better. So I think these are the things that has to be done, no matter it's global and locally, to drive plastic reduction. Hopefully one day we don't have to use it at all. Yeah, on that note, I can particularly relate to because in China we do have this phenomenon of eating a lot of takeaways, especially during the pandemic. It's becoming a phenomenon. I think it produces a lot of food waste and plastic waste. So we've had to create that sense of guilt. Yes, exactly, but there is guilt. But when you said you decided to keep away from them, I think that's very challenging. That takes a lot of determination, right? Because you're basically sacrificing your convenience. So on the note of rewards, financial rewards, I want to bring in Pullman. I heard about this meta-green project you're doing in Metaverse. I think in Sandbox, is that right? So that offers a metaverse version of green hotel, net-zero hotel, and you give online-to-offline rewards. How does it work? Can you share with us? So the reason I launched MetaGreen is because I truly believe in collaboration for change and impact. We live in a very complex world with very urgent challenges to be met. So to go far, we have to go together. That's why I launched this meta-green, which is the first Web3 green communities, the first green metropolis on Sandbox. And in this green utopian world, we don't just have a green hotel. Rather, we actually have like-minded partners join this ecosystem. Together, we want to foster eco-friendly behavior and reward, as Jillian mentioned, green choices. So what we do is we provide immersive entertainment experiences on the Sandbox. And we have partners such as leading banks, also leading supermarkets, shopping malls, all types of players, so that we together can drive online-to-offline behavior and also vice versa. It's a decarbonized and earned model that is quite different from just playing and earning. Just elaborate a little bit more. If I'm a player in Sandbox and I enter your virtual hotel, how do I behave to get reward? So one way is in the virtual hotel that you will experience the latest PropTech invention so you will see what a net-zero hotel will be like. And then you will go through the hotel and you will learn to minimize your carbon footprint. And then after you go through those experiences, you can redeem an NFT that can allow you to enjoy physical rewards at one of our outlets and hotels. And actually, it's vice versa because in our upcoming app, we actually let consumers choose certain behaviors such as foregoing towel usage or daily housekeeping. And they will be rewarded points that can be stored also in the metaverse. Just to follow up on that, because we know a lot of consumers already have intention to be more energy and water saving. But sometimes it's a little bit difficult for them to translate their intention into real action. So in the real world, what do you do to make the translation to give them enough motivation to put real action into real behavior? For example, by the end of this year, we'll go completely plastic-free. And the way to do that is also to get the consumers to support this movement. So when they say, okay, I'm not gonna use any of the disposable shampoos and body wash and all those amenities, then we give them points. So it's actually very instant. And it's stored in the loyalty program so that they can be rewarded for each and every choice so that they can be more mindful of the impact of their consumption. That's great. So we will, in your hotel, have shampoo-only bottles. In dispensers. But of course they can still request, but that would be only upon special requests. Stuart, I want to come back to you because I think the capital plays an important role. And in our previous discussion, you said something about only 1% of investment goes into the agriculture or food industry. That seems a very small number. Tell us why this is the case. Yeah, I mean, actually I have no data to back up the 1%. But I think right now there's a lot of exponential technologies that are really captivating people's imagination. So like chat, GPT and generative AI is kind of the hot topic right now. And so there's kind of a disproportionate amount of capital going into these other sectors. I think with agriculture and technology surrounding agriculture, it really requires patient capital. The change happens over a long period of time, but once the change happens, it's a huge paradigm shift. So the efficiencies aren't just an increase of a couple of percentages. We're talking about a 10x, 100x improvement in how things are being done. And so right now kind of the way in which maybe some of these investors are incentivized to be able to deploy their capital isn't very conducive to being very patient. But what's really exciting is that there's a huge shift that's happening. If you look at the capital that's being deployed in the space industry and other industries that also require enormously patient capital, they're attracting huge numbers of credible investors. Sovereign wealth funds are investing. Family offices are investing. And so the general pool of investors that are looking into AgTech as a way for them to not only just do good, but also do well, this is actually really picking up a lot of steam. And so in particularly in Asia, we see a lot of support from family offices, sovereign wealth from the Middle East. And what's, food is one of those things just like water, but it has 100% penetration. Wherever humans exist, there's food. And internet and housing may not exist everywhere, but food definitely does. And so the impact that you can make if you're investing in technology that is really kind of focused on these efficiencies and affordability and accessibility can make a huge impact globally. And these things are becoming much easier now with IoT and software and AI to become measurable. So before it was kind of this very nebulous I'm doing good for the planet. It wasn't really, I'm not really sure how big my impact is. And now it's becoming translatable into not only kind of how many liters of water I'm saving, but also how many dollars I'm also saving the supply chain as well. And so a lot of technology across the entire supply chain from addressing food waste all the way down to kind of the circular economy. So like what are you gonna do with like recycling all across the supply chain, capital is being deployed. So it's very exciting to see. So is it fair to say technology has enabled us to perhaps be, I mean being green while being profitable as well. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because so far I mean green, green is some, I mean means a lot of expenditure, but as Apoma just said, it already generates a lot of savings, right? So eventually green, green can be profitable. Yeah, now that it's easy to measure it's really easy to make decisions. So if you can, if you have these AI platforms that can measure your food waste and they can understand what's being thrown away, how much of it's being thrown away, how much that costs to produce, then it's translatable into oh, if we make, adjust portion sizes, adjust these things. And so on the production side, now that it's becoming much easier to measure resource consumption, labor efficiency, it's become, it's directly translating into savings for producers and making the entire, entire sector more efficient. And so. I would actually add to that, sorry for interrupt. The, there is a, there is an industry perspective from the cost side on this. There's also consumer benefit side to it. And consumers are willing to pay. So you shouldn't completely outpriced yourself. But at the end of the day, you have a very large group of consumers who are willing to pay for good, sustainable food. And I really like what you say with the app, um, um, around, um, around gamification. We bought a company last year called Nutrachek based out of Nottingham. What they do is calorie counting in a very gamified way of actually, of actually tracking what you eat and of tracking the ingredients of what you eat. And suddenly people become very conscious about their daily lives. And I think we need to get that part of the equation. And yeah, it can be quite scary. But what you do is you become much more conscious and people actually pay for an app like that, a monthly subscription fee. And yes, that is a hugely profitable business because people really care about what they eat, how they feed themselves. And I think we should, we should have that in mind. It's not only about cost and getting very efficient at feeding the masses. It's also creating an awareness that it makes a ton of difference to your personal life, how you feed yourself. And it can actually be a lot of fun tracking that. But I think there's an angle we should not forget. We should start tracking about the waste, that plastic waste that we throw away with all our takeaways. That's, I think, becoming urgent before. We can do that as well, absolutely. Before I ask my last round of questions, I just want to remind our audience here and online. In a few minutes, we will open the floor to questions. So we encourage everyone to participate in our discussion. So, Tia, I want to come back to you because we were talking about investors and their willingness to invest in this. I'm sure your story is encouraging because you're expanding, meaning a lot of capital is still coming into the EcoCity. So tell us a bit more about your plan to expand. What's the next phase? You want to become a hub for innovation. Is that right? The EcoCity is 30 square kilometres. We have developed half of it. And in terms of the vision that we set out in the early days to build a harmonious, livable environment where people can live, work and play, I think we have achieved that quite well. So I'm thinking of expanding the role of the EcoCity to beyond that. We started as the Green Sustainable City but I think we can do more in view of the fact that both Singapore and China have got decarbonisation goals. In China, we have the 30-60 goals that were carbon goals and in Singapore, we also have carbon neutrality goals by the middle of the century. And I think given that there will be a lot of new technologies, new startups, companies that are developing new solutions for the new low-carbon economy, be it technology in terms of new types of renewable energy or new ways of producing renewable energy or energy storage systems or carbon capture technologies and so on and so forth, we thought that it would be a good extension for the EcoCity to become a place whereby you can do more research and even manufacturing of new products and solutions that will lead to a low-carbon world. And that requires building the ecosystem, meaning you need to have an ecosystem to attract talent, to attract the necessary manpower, to have the VCs as investors, to have the right regulatory environment, to have the test-building facilities and places and so on. So I'm hoping a discussion with the various government authorities to build up this ecosystem so that in time, companies will find that it is natural to set up their first operations in the EcoCity and contribute to the decarbonisation efforts of both countries and impact the work. That's very encouraging. I think, Stuart, we've just found you a potential investor. And perhaps a potential customer at Regal Hotels. So we'll open the floor to questions. Okay, this gentleman here. You probably serve a lot of Fortune 500, like with a measuring of the occupancy in their commercial buildings. So the result is super shocking. A lot of great commercial buildings are single-digit occupancy rate. And then to that, really driven me to this thing. Like, frankly, we talk about plastic, which is a poll-search out for waste. But sadly, the concrete is actually 10x bigger waste of plastic. So today's theme is about better living, no waste. So it's probably easier for plastic container product to have a super hard, super hard for building as a product. So just similar to what Ms. Lowe said, like probably more virtual hotels. That's right. But my question here is that regarding that, how we potentially reduce, like, building as a product with these waste, this is a question for Ms. Lowe and also to you. Okay. I think that's a great question, because in Asia, buildings actually account for up to 60%. Of carbon emissions compared to 30% in the West. Mainly because of weather conditions. For example, in Hong Kong, it's very hot and humid. We experience winter indoors, when it's actually sweltering hot outside. So I think obviously it has to do with behavioral choice as well, we don't necessarily need this kind of air conditioning for optimum functioning. But of course, I think it boils down to firstly, commitment from the real estate developers to pledge to transition. So for that there are lots of technology inventions out there that can make a huge difference in terms of energy, management, smart building systems can help a lot. Digital twins can help us spot potential problems and see real time the carbon emissions and where the problems are, so that we can actually fix them before actually, a lot of wastage, a lot of harm has already been done. And then secondly, I think it has to do with, we have to get everyone to work together so that we can provide fertile ground for green buildings. For that to happen, I think we definitely need to foster collaboration and partnerships between the real estate, private sector, academia as well as government. So I think for that to happen, we have to also establish the right standards, invest in research, into the disciplinary research to set the right standards and measurements so that we know exactly what we're striving to achieve, then we can actually measure along the way our progress. The government obviously needs to play a stronger role in providing very solid incentives, especially in an era of volatile market conditions when everyone is struggling with the surge in interest rates. When it's a matter of survival, it's hard to prioritize sustainability. So the government definitely needs to provide more tax incentives. For example, if you adopt PropTech or if you use green building materials, could you perhaps provide a bit of incentives in terms of the plot ratio? Or could you facilitate the approval process so that developers can actually be incentivized to act quickly? And then the banks, we have to work together to actually define exactly what a green bond should entail. I think going forward, all building loans should be green. So we shouldn't have a category for green loans because that ought to be a requirement. At academia, I think we also have to work to support them because professors, scientists, they ought to focus on R&D. So we have to, as a private sector, come in as their commercial partner to help them pilot commercializing scale. Do you want to take a look? Two perspectives. First is as a consumer of products like concrete. As a developer, we use a lot of concrete, obviously. So all the buildings in the EcoCity are green. 100% green buildings. So in our buildings, we have to think of passive design, design to make better use of light and keep the heat in and so on, or insulation and so on. So we do all of that, and solar panel and so on, so forth. Maybe geothermal power and so on. So we do that as much as we can to reduce carbon emission, and that's as a consumer. The second perspective will be as the creator of this environment. And we hope to create an environment whereby companies can start to develop new building materials, new types of concrete, and so on, so forth, so that in the future, there will be a concrete that is low carbon emitting, and so on, so forth. So that's what we can do as a consumer and as a creator of the overall environment. Can I ask you one thing? Sure. Briefly. I recently saw a statistic in Japan that 9,000 elementary schools are abandoned now. They're shut down because there aren't kids to fill them. Ageing population. And so what we're trying to work with on the government is to try to create community centers out of these unused real estate projects where we can integrate both food production and education in an environment where instead of destroying the building we're just leaving it abandoned that we can repurpose it. So I think kind of this recycling of building is not maybe kind of a very big topic, but trying to find alternative uses for these things is something that we're also looking into from a food perspective as well. That's an excellent point. Thank you for raising that question. I think it's a good contribution to our overall discussion. Unfortunately, we're running out of time. So I'm just going to wrap up really quickly. Thank you, everyone, for your insights, for your sharing with your successes and challenges, making real progress in sustainable growth. So I'm now going to pass the floor to Kim Hui-Neel, who's the Managing Director Center for Nature and Climate World Economic Forum to share the commitment and program of your branch of the web. Web, thank you. Thanks, Ong Pham. I'll keep my comments very brief because I know we are out of time. And thank you for facilitating a very interesting conversation. I thought I'll just share some reflections hearing from the panelists. One is that I think waste is a long overdue subject or opportunity, right? And it's, in fact, a low-hanging fruit, right? And there was a lot of talk around food, right? If you look at food systems, it accounts for one-third of global emissions, one-third. That's a lot, right? And about 50% of these emissions is due to wastage, right? And if you have heard from the panelists and they come from different sectors and with different expertise, it is actually one where everyone can actually play a part. You can actually act on food waste at an individual level, at an entity level, right? But also through partnerships, right? Public-private partnership, or even collaboration with local communities, harnessing technology, right? At a forum, what we thrive on is really helping to build this multi-stakeholder dialogue. So we've got work around food, water, resource use, right? And to the last comments earlier, it's not just about usage, it's also about how to better utilise, right, and steward the resources that we have. We know we're using close to two-planned earths today. We're borrowing from our children and their children. And if we can actually just think about waste and how we can actually cut to zero waste, even just have it, right? We will be closer to where we need to be in terms of net-zero-nation-positive, better-living futures. So on that note, thank you all for being here. Thank you. Just a big round of applause to all of you. Thank you. Thank you.