Anti-waste group kicks off a campaign to incentivise Singaporean consumers to bring their own cups, bottles, bags and containers, and so cut down on plastic use.

Coffee drinkers in Singapore might find that their morning brew tastes a little bit sweeter from now on, as a number of local cafes have started offering discounts to customers who bring their own cups as part of a waste-reduction campaign.

Read more: New campaign aims to put lid on Singapore’s use of disposable plastics

Physicist Michio Kaku once said, "What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems... there's no law of physics preventing them." And so it has been with railway and metro bridges that span waterways. The city of Washington, D.C., is bounded on two sides by rivers and an untold number of streams. Every morning the Orange Line, one of six train lines that serve the city, ferries 12,060 commuters—per hour. And this miracle occurs every day in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and numerous other metropolitan areas. In the United Kingdom alone there are more than 40,000 railway bridges.

Read more: In the face of climate change can our engineers keep the trains running on time?

This is the first time a WMO Regional Office will be located within Asia and the South-West Pacific and the Office will act as a forum for regional challenges such as trans-boundary haze arising from large-scale land and vegetation fires.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) opened a new office for the Asia-Pacific region in Singapore on August 21 2017 to improve coordination on hazards ranging from floods to fires and to strengthen meteorological services for rapidly evolving economic sectors such as air and marine transport. The Regional Office is being hosted by the Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) and will serve as the nerve centre for WMO’s programmes in the region.

Read more: The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) opens new regional office in Singapore