For years now, climate change has been a matter of concern globally. The planet is continuously facing new challenges, and we’re seeing our fragile ecosystem under threat as natural disasters eradicate habitats. Aiming to make a greener change, Ubisoft Singapore celebrated Environment Wellness for January’s Wellness@Ubi – an initiative for our devs. Read on to find out more!
The studio started off the month with a kick-off meeting and an awareness talk on the key to sustainability for businesses – environmental consciousness. Subsequently, we dived into a screening of WWF Film “Our Planet: Our Business”. It’s easy to ignore what’s happening around the world, but ignorance isn’t bliss when bad things catch up with us. Inspired by Netflix's ground-breaking “Our Planet” series, the short film highlights the dangers of a changing climate and ultimately how businesses can play a leading role in innovation to save our planet. Did you know that Lake Chad in Africa, for example, has shrunk by 90%. It was a resource for 40 million people. That’s like removing water for everyone in Singapore five times over! And it’s not going to happen – it already has.
We also hosted external speakers from Zero Waste Singapore, a local NGO and NPO to share their expertise and tips on reducing plastic waste and recycling. Every year, Singapore’s plastic consumption reaches a minimum of 1.76 billion items, with a tiny 6% of them being recycled. Now we might be wrong, but that sounds like a heck load of nasty plastics being buried in our landfills. Throughout the months, we’ve started the roll out of measures throughout the Singapore studio with metal cutlery, straws and bag trees for our devs’ use. A studio is its people and we want to be part of the solution!
Saving the best for last, we ended off the month with a trip to the local beach for a clean-up operation. When we say we like to get our hands dirty, we weren’t kidding!
The 4-hour clean-up operation ended with at least 40 kilograms of trash collected by our 45 studio volunteers. Some of our notable beach finds included a huge plastic barrel, ½ a toilet bowl (we’re just as confused as you are), a fishing pole, countless bits of Styrofoam plastic and plenty of shoes. While a sizable amount of trash was expected, it was still an experience that surprised most of us.
By end of the day, we left with aching backs (picking up litter is hard work!) and a silent resolution to do better for our environment. Once you’ve picked out hundreds of tiny pieces of Styrofoam out from the bushes, it puts a new perspective on whether you want to use one the next time you take away.
Watch our beach clean-up operation here:
To thank our volunteers for their time and efforts, we gifted each of them with this super rad Ubisoft branded cap (in the perfect shade of green of course!).
While we celebrate our wins, these efforts of a few alone will never be enough. We do have dedicated individuals that are passionate about making a difference but to be successful, it comes down to each of us to do something, even if it’s not perfect. As has become one of our most common sayings in the studio, we don’t need one person to do it perfectly, we just need everyone to do it imperfectly. By acting together, we can take a step toward fighting for our planet.
After all, as Sir David Attenborough once said, “Nature once determined how we survive. Now, we determine how nature survives”.
Commit to taking one small environmentally friendly action per week, or better still, join us at Ubisoft Singapore, we’ll show you how #LifeAtUbi does it with fun and style!