The dense haze episode two weeks ago was a “special, extreme case of waste disposal gone wrong”, said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday.
It was agricultural waste incinerated out in the open, leading to smog in the air that people were forced to breathe, said the minister, who cited the haze as an example of how the rising amount of waste generated posed a threat to the environment.
Speaking at the Waste Management Symposium and 3R Packaging Awards yesterday, he noted that the amount of waste generated per person per day currently has doubled from the World Bank estimate of 0.64kg a decade ago. The 0.64kg figure is expected to triple in the next 10 years.
This poses a potential environmental crisis, as air and environment quality is crucial in a world where half the people live in densely-populated cities. This compared to the past, when cities were less populated and “only a few are inconvenienced” if things went wrong.
Dr Balakrishnan cautioned that the usual ways of waste disposal are no longer sustainable and viable. “The day will come when we no longer have any more landfills,” he said. “And a day will come when we will have to recycle — not just because the raw materials are valuable but because you can’t afford to dump it anywhere else.”
He cited packaging waste as an example, saying that it makes up a third of what the public discards at home. “It is ethically wrong that more than 80 per cent of our waste consists of recyclable material … yet so little of that is recycled,” he added.
Sixteen companies were lauded yesterday for their efforts and achievements in reducing packaging waste. These companies were amongst 128 signatories to the second Singapore Packaging Agreement signed in 2012 .
Since the first agreement in 2007, 14,900 tonnes of packaging waste were cumulatively reduced, saving signatories about S$31 million in the material costs of locally consumed products. Firms who signed the second agreement will work towards a total annual reduction of 6,500 tonnes of packaging waste by 2015. As of last month, the total amount reduced was about 4,800 tonnes.
Dr Balakrishnan, however, felt that the productivity of Singapore’s waste disposal industry could improve. “Our labour productivity, our land productivity, our use of technology, and really, the value-add of a worker for this sector is far too low,” he said. “We should be able to do so much more with fewer workers, but to be able to pay them more as well.”
The Republic’s waste disposal industry employs 12,000 workers. Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore (WMRAS) chairman Jerome Baco said: “Adoption of new technologies might help increase the labour productivity to match the higher ratios that we can see in Taiwan or Japan.”
The minister added that Singapore has roughly 1,000 drivers and crew who have undergone Workforce Skills Qualifications training and the country needs to enable these workers to progress to a “higher occupational level”, such as supervisors and managers, and to pay them more.
