Sustainability turns into addictive when you see the preliminary successes, Ms Gan says. Busting the parable that it’s all the time expensive, she suggests beginning with “low-hanging fruits” – modifications that require much less funding however can yield vital environmental and monetary advantages.
“If we use cheaper however extra hazardous chemical compounds, they may stream into our water therapy plant and now we have to place extra ancillary chemical compounds to deal with the water earlier than we eliminate it,” she says.
With a reverse osmosis water therapy facility, “we additionally change filters much less usually”. “So there are a number of secondary financial savings that you wouldn’t have considered.”
Ghim Li – which has its personal material mill in Malaysia – is all the time on the hunt for sustainable material improvements.
In 2020, the corporate secured a brand new sustainable plant-based antimicrobial expertise developed by Nanyang Technological College scientists that can be utilized as an antibacterial material ending.
This innovation thrust Ghim Li into the limelight in the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, when it was approached by the Authorities to make 20 million items of reusable anti-bacterial masks.
Regardless of the tight one-month deadline, the corporate rose to the event and fulfilled the order. The hassle earned Ms Gan the Public Service Medal in 2021.
Proper now, she is extraordinarily enthusiastic about textiles handled with CozTerra, a floor coating developed by native start-up Xinterra that may soak up carbon dioxide. Apparently, 20 T-shirts constructed from coated materials can soak up the identical quantity of carbon dioxide a mature tree removes in a day.
“Once you wash the T-shirts, the laundry detergent and the water will react and alter the carbon (dioxide) to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in order that it doesn’t return into the surroundings,” says Ms Gan, who has shared Ghim Li’s sustainability journey at quite a few occasions.
One such occasion was the inaugural Navigating Change Collectively: Partnering For A Sustainable Future, organised by DBS in April. It targeted on serving to companies incorporate environmental, social and governance practices of their operations.
Ms Gan says DBS has seen Ghim Li via thick and skinny, together with the Asian monetary disaster in 1997 and the outbreak of the extreme acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars, in 2003.
“Due to our longstanding relationship, DBS didn’t cancel any of our credit score traces throughout Covid-19,” says Ms Gan, who grew to become CEO in July 2021 when the pandemic was raging.
“The traces have been very wanted at that time limit, as a result of it was enterprise as traditional, and we had an enormous masks contract with the Authorities. The asset conversion cycle and in addition the yarn buy was lots larger, however the financial institution continued to assist us in commerce financing.”
With Ms Gan on the helm, Ghim Li has launched different initiatives together with 3D design to scale back the quantity of samples and lead time in prototyping, in addition to digitalisation of the ordering course of.
“We’ve to proceed exploring untapped areas comparable to automation and digitalisation inside our group,” says Ms Gan, including that Ghim Li is at present constructing a inexperienced manufacturing facility on 4ha of land in Central Java, Indonesia.
She names her staff, prospects and business companions because the sparks which ignite her.
“And, in fact, my major motivator and mentor is my mom, who has all the time impressed me to spark change within the enterprise and scale better heights.”
