A Sustainability Initiative Leads The Fight Against Climate Change

Sentosa Golf Club is home to two world-class championship golf courses – The New Tanjong and Serapong, and currently holds the accolade of ‘World’s Best Golf Club’ (World Golf Awards). It also plays host to two of Asia’s biggest tournaments, the SMBC Singapore Open and the HSBC Women’s World Championship.

With more than 1,500 members, many of whom are prominent personalities from influential circles, Sentosa Golf Club is one of the world’s great golf clubs, recognised also for its pristine course conditioning and best in class service accompanied by breath-taking views of metropolitan Singapore.

The club is one of the world’s leading environmentally sustainable golf clubs, having implemented a number of initiatives through its two ground-breaking campaigns, #KeepItGreen and GAME ON. In this second of a two-part conversation, we sat down with Sentosa Golf Club General Manager, Andrew Johnston, to discuss what makes Sentosa’s environmental vision so unique.

Andrew, share with us your long association with Sentosa Golf Club.

My interaction with Sentosa started in 2005 as a Golf Course Designer at Bates Golf Design Group. We helped the club with some modifications to the Tanjong course that extended into the full renovation of the Serapong Course.

In 2010, Sentosa needed help with their preparations ahead of the Barclays Singapore Open, a $7,000,000 event. Having arrived to help out 60 days before the event, I am still here today as the club’s General Manager and Director of Agronomy. Honestly, life is full of unpredictable moments, and we never know where it is going to take us.

In October this year my involvement with Sentosa Golf Club will span over 15 years. The club is now part of my life and is like my family at times. It holds a very special place in my heart.

Sentosa is one of the world’s leading environmentally sustainable golf clubs, what is its sustainable vision?

We recognized several years ago the need to drive sustainability at the club, both on and off the course, and for someone in the industry to take the lead in the fight against climate change. Climate change is a serious threat to the world we live in and if changes are not implemented within many industries around the world, it will lead to irreversible damage.

We are not evangelistic, but there is a real need to become carbon neutral and begin to work in a positive direction to accomplish the task at hand. Golf is one sport that can play a major role in helping to reverse the direction of climate change.

Is environmental sustainability something you have focused a lot on during your career?

When the topic of global warming first appeared to hit the headlines, I was not sure if it was a political stunt or real. However, over time science has begun to reveal data to show how the world is evolving.

What’s scary is that it seems to have picked up momentum and now is quickly reaching the point of no return, if we do not play our part and address the issue immediately.

What are some of the key sustainable initiatives that have been introduced at the club?

Since the launch of our environmental campaign, #KeepItGreen, at the 2018 SMBC Singapore Open, we have implemented a number of initiatives to help create a lasting sustainable environment at the club.

To name a few, we have removed and continue to remove single use plastics, including the banning of all plastic water bottles from our golf courses, instead replacing them with water stations. We are adding clean energy to our power consumption needs with some exploratory floating solar beds to be added and have replaced all the golf carts in our fleet with lithium-based carts that are rechargeable and last for a longer period of time.

Our irrigation systems have been converted to a single head control system, and this alongside the addition of some very high-tech filtration systems, have allowed us to reduce our water resources used by up to 60%.

We became the first club in Asia to introduce carbon products into our agronomy programme and purchased GPS spraying equipment in order to improve efficiency and reduce our fertility applications by up to 50% and pesticide applications by up to 95%.

This year, the club will be investing in food and horticultural waste digesters that will convert the waste produced by the club into plant food, which can then be used on our two championship courses and landscaping areas as fertilizer.

We have built our own sustainable herb garden on-site, as well as creating our own colonies of stingless bees to help play our part in maintaining the population levels for one of the world’s most important species.

Keep It Green has very much now become a way of life at the club.

What can the golfing industry expect from Sentosa’s new campaign GAME ON?

The GAME ON campaign is our way of bringing awareness to global issues and helping the industry leaders, like the R&A and GEO, to build momentum with their larger environmental programmes.

We want to help unite the game’s key stakeholders with the wider golfing community to implement new modern processes for the betterment of environment. We hope golf club’s around the world will accept the GAME ON agronomic and operational model and start to introduce into it their systems.

GAME ON will provide an in depth look at the club’s programme, via a free downloadable toolkit which is coming later in the year, as well as help other clubs to make an impact on the world’s biggest issue and reduce their own carbon footprint.

It is connected in its similarities with the R&A’s Golf Course 2030 sustainability initiative that considers the impacts, both positive and negative, of a changing climate, resource constraints and regulations on course conditions and playability. Like GAME ON, it aims to steer the sport in a direction to mitigate these challenges and take advantage of the opportunities created by these issues.

With the current issues of climate change, how can the game of golf help combat the threat presented to us?

Golf clubs around the world have the ability to get involved and support projects such as GAME ON and the R&A’s Golf Course 2030 Sustainability initiative that are making a concise effort to try and change the direction of climate change and continue to make it available for future generations to play.

These campaigns not only look to help reverse the impact of climate change, but also want to create improved playing conditions at clubs to help promote the game of golf and make it more attractive for new golfers to take up the game.

If golf clubs unite and start to implement more sustainable initiatives, it will go a long way to helping to prevent the permanent impact of climate change and the world reaching the point of no return. We all currently have a choice and for us, as I keep saying, it’s not game over, it’s GAME ON!