A Singaporean climate advocacy group has called on government negotiators to lobby for bold policy interventions including a pollution tax and production cuts ahead of crucial talks to forge a historic treaty to tackle the plastic crisis.
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In an open letter addressed to Singapore government representatives published last week, campaign group Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA) appealed to the city-state’s negotatiors to adopt a “strong, forward-looking” stance on tackling plastic pollution, and push for policies that hold corporations to account for pollution and foster “genuinely sustainable” solutions for curbing waste.
Singapore will be one of 175 countries taking part in the final round of negotiations, or INC-5, to hammer out a international agreement to combat plastic pollution. The talks will be held in South Korea in November. Negotiations so far have been compromised by disagreement over how far the treaty should go to address upstream production amid heavy lobbying from industry.
Taxes, targets and transparency
The non-profit said in its letter that Singapore’s negotiators should push for a science-based plastic production reduction target of 40 per cent by 2040, in line with a proposal made by Peru and Rwanda at the last round of treaty talks.
The 40 per cent target – which is well below the 75 per cent reduction that other green groups such as Greenpeace have been pushing for – aims to help bring about a circular economy for plastics that aligns with the 1.5°C limit of the Paris climate accord, SYCA said.
The group stressed that reductions should focus on persistent, bioaccumulative, mobile and toxic (PBMT) plastics, which are particularly harmful to human health and the environment.
Its boldest policy recommendation is for a plastic pollution tax on producing companies. Some of the world’s largest biggest petrochemicals producers such as ExxonMobil have a large presence in Singapore. A plastic tax would incentivise the development of alternative materials by imposing costs on plastic production, and fund better infrastructure in countries with leaky waste management systems, SYCA said.
The plastics industry has been criticised for deceptively pushing recycling as a viable solution to the plastic crisis, when only 9 per cent of plastics are recycled globally. SYCA called for effective waste management solutions that keep waste exports to a minimum and incentivise waste reduction. It highlighted Southeast Asia as a region with particularly leaky waste management systems, and said regional alignment was needed to harmonise such systems.
It said there was a need for plastics production to be simplified, using fewer and safer chemicals. Simplifying chemical use in plastics – there are over 16,000 known plastic chemicals, of which only 6 per cent are regulated – could make managing plastic products easier at end-of-life, the group said.
It also recommended the creation of a centralised plastics database that includes both plastic producers and downstream recyclers to better manage the life cycle of plastics, as the circular economy has been plagued by a lack of traceability and accountability.
The non-profit said that it empathised with the “quandary” that the Singapore government has to navigate – tougher regulation on plastics could hurt Singapore’s competitiveness as a petrochemicals hub – but said such challenges “reinforce” the justification to use international policy to drive change at a local level, for instance a plastic tax that could help fund a pivot to circular business models.
Singapore’s Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment said in a statement that it had been considering all feedback from stakeholders “alongside our national context and circumstances” as it formulates its national position in the lead-up to INC-5.
“Balancing the necessary trade-offs will ensure that we continue to benefit the lives and livelihoods of all Singaporeans,” a spokesperson told Eco-Business. It did not directly address SYCA’s asks.
Singapore generates the second most waste per capita in Asia, after Hong Kong. Its plastic recycling rate dropped to just 5 per cent in 2023, the lowest point since the 20-year low of 4 per cent in 2019. The introduction of a polluter-pays scheme has been repeatedly delayed amid industry lobbying.
