By Obiabin Onukwugha
There is no doubt that young persons are leading the way for a greener future. Faced with the challenges of global warming and plastic pollution, these youngsters across the globe have braced up to convert waste that are hitherto harmful to the environment and human health to productive ventures that solve environmental pollution problems, while at the same time fetching income for themselves and millions of people.
Recently, a 29-year-old Ms Oh Chu Xian, has been captured by The Straits Times in one of its report of using what was deemed as unrecyclable plastic to make Singapore greener.
Xian, who is the Founder of Magorium developed a novel technology which converts plastic waste into a material called NEWBitumen, to build roads.
Growing up in a family business that produced materials for road construction laid the foundation for Xian’s mission.
This innovative solution, according to the report, processes various types of plastic including those that are contaminated, such as medical waste from hospitals.
“This waste, for the longest time, has been considered unrecyclable, both in Singapore and other parts of the world. But we’ve been able to do it and divert tens of thousands of kilograms of plastic waste from Singapore’s incineration,” Xian was quoted as saying.
Reports have it that in 2022, Magorium diverted more than 8,000 kg of plastic waste from incineration when they completed a green driveway at DBS Newton Green using NEWBitumen.
With Magorium, Ms Oh aims to build a sustainable future by enabling businesses and developers to dispose of their plastic waste responsibly, quickly and affordably. This is crucial as a whopping 95 per cent of plastic waste goes unrecycled in Singapore.
“My mission has always been to increase Singapore’s recycling rate by using plastic as a resource, rather than treating it as waste.
“My family business exposed me to the built environment sector and how most infrastructure that has been developed was at the expense of mining resources from our earth,” she said.
But pulling through and convincing industry players was not easy for Xian until 2022 when her work began to pull through.
“There was a general sense of dismissiveness and resistance to trying something new in both the waste management and built environment sector,” she says, though she understood their reluctance to take risks.
“However, since we are living in a climate where change is increasingly necessary to survive, I believe it is time to fix something that is broken,” she stated.
Magorium’s first project in 2020, was building the driveway of a factory’s carpark using NEWBitumen. She said: “To convince the owner to give us a shot, we gave a discount, issued a warranty to fix things if they go wrong, and offered test reports to show that the new road would work like a normal one.
“After that, we started to become more credible in the eyes of older and more experienced professionals.”
One small win led to another, and Magorium was awarded the DBS Foundation Grant in 2021. Since 2014, the DBS Foundation has provided grant funding to 140 social enterprises and SMEs to scale their business models and deepen their impact.