Households will be encouraged to recycle more through incentives given by waste-collection companies.
The requirement to provide incentives, starting from July, will be stipulated when public waste collection contracts with companies are renewed.
Environment and Water Resources Minister Yaacob Ibrahim announced the incentive requirement when he spoke yesterday during the debate on his ministry’s budget, which was approved.
He was responding to Dr Lim Wee Kiak (Sembawang GRC), who had asked about the efforts being made by the ministry to boost household recycling.
A pilot project by waste collection firm Veolia involving some 6,000 landed homes in the Tanglin-Bukit Merah area will start next month. Their bins for recyclable material have been fitted with electronic tags.
Specially outfitted collection trucks will weigh the tagged bins and send information to a database. When bins are emptied into trucks, workers will check for non-recyclable material and offer residents advice on recycling methods.
Affected households will not need to pay extra for the technology, as the pilot scheme is funded in part by the National Environment Agency’s (NEA) 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) waste-minimisation and recycling fund.
The $8 million fund, set up in 2009, has given out money for 15 projects which are estimated to help reduce 50,000 more tonnes of waste.
In the Tanglin-Bukit Merah project, the households will eventually be able to earn reward points by recycling more. One possibility is that the points can then be used, for example, to redeem groceries at participating stores. Details of this plan are still being finalised.
The incentive scheme, part of an enhanced National Recycling Programme, will also apply to public housing estates.
Recycling bins there will be similarly electronically tagged and weighed, and households and communities given rewards for recycling.
But different approaches may be taken in different estates.
When the NEA renews contracts with collection companies operating in Housing Board estates, every block will get a recycling bin. This will be a change from the current practice of one bin for every five blocks. Recyclable material will also be collected daily.
Landed homes will get garden waste collected for composting and recyclable material picked up every week.
Homes in the Pasir Ris-Tampines region - one of nine geographic sectors for waste collection - will get to enjoy the incentive scheme from July 1, when the area’s new seven-year contract starts.
When waste-collection contracts for the other eight sectors come up for renewal over the next two years, the requirement for companies to provide incentives will be stated in the contracts.
Camden Park home owner Lin Chen, 54, welcomes the initiative even though her family already recycles.
‘I’m not really interested in the points,’ she said. ‘All I need is the bin and someone to collect the recycling.’
In Parliament, Dr Yaacob stressed the need to reduce overall waste. Singapore’s approach to waste management, he said, is to cut back on waste first, reuse material and finally recycle.
‘We can and must all do our part to reduce the amount of waste we each generate and dispose of, through simple everyday habits like recycling bottles and reducing food waste,’ he reminded.
The average Singaporean, he said, throws out 860g of waste a day, which adds up to more than 300kg a year - enough to cover an eighth of the country’s surface area.
Singapore has set itself a target of recycling 70 per cent of waste by 2030, up from 58 per cent last year.
