Recycling in Singapore

Singapore is the ideal place for a national recycling program. You would simply mandate that everyone recycles (as in Canada) on pain of egregious fines (fines are big here) and in a short time you'd have over 90% recycling rates. But that doesn't happened now. Is it because Singaporeans are among the laziest people in the world?

So where does all the waste in this country goes... Into landfills? Shipped to Indonesia? There are four incinerators in Singapore - at Ulu Pandan, Tuas, Senoko and Tuas South... The government is calling them "waste to energy" plants. As usual, independent efforts don't go very far so Uncle GOS (Government of Singapore) has to step in. In this case it is in the form of the Singapore Environment Council which has a good list of recycling resources. Well the list is up to date but unfortunately everything on there seems to be some kind of thrift shop.

But to be fair, we can't overlook the New Water recycling effort which turns sewage into drinking water. And there are a number of lights on footpaths that use solar power (that's pretty cool).

Well somebody MUST be recycling in this country because there are recycling bins in my condo but for the life of me I don't know who does the collection. Is it possible this is just the rag and bone man getting organised? There does seem to be some kind of National Recycling Programme that's ongoing but is this just an umbrella term for encouraging people to send business to independent operators in this area? Who gets the booty from the Recycling Bins scattered around the island? There certainly seem to be some major players in this space - like ECO and EcoWise.

But who collects my cans and how can I get them to collect them from the whole condo by making the system easier for my lazier neighbours?

Labels: singapore