The problems of waste and the issues of waste management not limited to one country or a place, it is the problem of the entire nation (Karak, Bhagat and Bhattacharyya 2012). Due to the advent of the technology and the growing population all over the world, it is becoming more difficult to manage the waste. The industrial wastes have always been the concern. Moreover, the household wastes are also creating the similar problems. At times, the owners of various companies keep a check on the waste as a part of their corporate social responsibility. However, the people who are accumulating the waste materials are not giving second thought before throwing the garbage. Singapore is one such country, which has been suffering from the accumulation of waste for a long range of time and it is high time that they take cetin steps that will help them to manage the solid waste. The presence of the rubbish chutes is one such example in Singapore. As the people are not able to see the accumulation of the waste, the waste is being dumped at a regular basis. The write-up will look into the issues of solid waste in Singapore, the steps taken by the government and other organizations who are managing the waste accumulation and what are the challenges faced by those organizations while managing the solid waste of the country.
As per a study, the Singaporeans are charged a fixed rate to have the household waste collected by the municipal authorities. However, there is no limitation or control on the amount of waste that would be collected from the household. As the Singaporeans are able to dispose their garbage as per their ease in the rubbish chutes, hence they do not give a second thought while throwing the garbage in the rubbish chutes. They are not able to see the amount of waste collected in the chutes and hence, the amount of wastes disposed by them keeps on growing at a steep rate. In addition to this, the issue that is faced by the Singaporeans is that they are not in a habit if categorising their wastes as recyclable waste and non-recyclable waste. In the budget that was presented in the year, 2014, Vivian Balakrishnan, the Environment and Water Resources Minister of Singapore has said that only 20 percent of the waste collected from the households of Singapore could be recycled (blog.nus.edu.sg 2014). The figure shows that the people living in Singapore has made very feeble progress in solid waste management in spite of being one of the leading nations in the world.
In addition to the lack of responsibility from the Singaporeans, the limited area in Singapore is an added disadvantage for the country. The only place that is remaining to be filled with garbage is the Pulau Semakau Landfill. However, it has been estimated that the place can support the garbage only until 2045 (White, Dranke and Hindle 2012). The rubbish chutes will not be able to sustain the waste of Singapore in the end. As the Singaporeans are used to the convenience of throwing the waste materials in the rubbish chute, hence, it is less likely that they are going to change their habit of throwing the garbage.
Figure 1: The Pulau Semakau Landfill
(Source: The Straits Times 2013)
Due to the growing amount of trash in the country, the National Environment Agency (NEA) has shown concern to handle the issue. Until the year, 2011, there used be just one big bin where all kinds of waste like plastics, recyclable items and paper used to be disposed collected from all the blocks of a locality (Chandrappa and Brown 2012). After the intervention of National Environment Agency, they stared having one bin for every block. Gradually, the number of bins increased in the HDB landscape. The waste management plan took another step ahead when a multi-storey recycling plant was proposed to be set up.
In July 2014, the National Environment Agency announced that the waste treatment plant that will open in the year 2040 (Yep 2016).
In the month of June 2014, the National Environment Agency asked the government to help in setting up the plant for waste management in Singapore. The proposal by National Environment Agency had a transparent and practical plan for the plant until the year 2030 and had even better plans for the year 2050 (Laurent et al. 2014). It has been estimated that going by the present accumulation rate of trash in Singapore, by the year 2030 the trash will grow until 12.3 million tonnes. In the year, 2013, 61 percent of the trash was recycled and the rest of the trashes were burnt to destroy (Othman et al. 2013). However, the burnt polluted the environment. The new waste management plan aims at recycling 70 percent of the waste of the country.
However, the there are certain issues with the new waste management plan by National Environment Agency. The sorting of the waste materials are done by individuals after they collected from the offices, households and the shops. Most of the organizations are not huge enough for the treatment of the waste and are unable to accommodate a huge amount of waste in the area. In addition to this, some of the sorting stations are done manually. As a result, it ends up taking more time than usual as well was more expensive. The main problem that was faced in the process was the problem of work force. The government needed to recruit more people by the year, 2030 who would be required to collect the trash, work at the plants an fasten the waste management process (Lim and Wang 2013).
In addition to this, the segregation of the waste needed to be taught to then people. At times, some of the wastes could not be recycled, as they got wet due to the mixture of the waste. As a result, in place of recycling the waste, they had to incinerate the whole waste.
Along with the household waste, the industrial wastes in Singapore contribute in producing more toxic wastes. Hence, it has become more important for the government to manage the industrial waste in an effective manner. Singapore has developed an advanced waste management system that will help in taking up less space, while the waste will be managed in an effective manner. Ninety-two percent of wastes collected from the industries are incinerated in Singapore (Melikoglu, Lin and Webb 2013). Even though burning of the waste materials will pollute the environment of the place yet if the burning is done to generate energy then it will help in solving other issues of the place. There four incineration plants present in Singapore and the process of incineration that is done in these plants has helped in saving 3% of the electricity needs in Singapore. The main aim of the industrial solid waste management system in Singapore is to focus on the following areas:
The sustainability of the industrial solid waste management in Singapore has the following strategies:
Decrease the amount of waste in the country by reducing the accumulation of waste, reuse and recycle the waste. It has been calculated that more than fifty percent of the industrial waste in Singapore is recycled.
Take measures so that there is zero landfill for the waste
Develop industries that will contribute in the waste management of the country and help Singapore as the centre that will excel in the waste management technology
The Senoko Waste-to-Energy Plant is one such industry in Singapore, which helps in generating energy from the waste materials in Singapore. Keppel Integrated Engineering (KIE) operates the Senoko Waste-to-Energy Plant. The plan has the capacity to treat 2400 tonnes of waste and generate 554MW of energy (Rajagopal et al. 2013). With the help of the plants, Singapore is able to treat 47.6% of waste that are set for incineration.
Figure 2: The Senoko Waste-to-Energy Plant in Singapore
(Source: International Enterprise Singapore, 2012)
Other organizations are not far behind in helping Singapore to manage their waste effectively. The JTC corporation is one of the famous developers in the industrial estates in Singapore has set up a 19-hectre pilot eco-recycling parks in Tuas located in Western Singapore (Ghiani et al. 2014). The area of the park is as big as 20 football fields together. The park will help various recycling organizations to cluster together and together help Singapore to manage the waste in a prompt and effective manner. Some of the recycling processes that are already going in the area are:
The Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore (WMRAS) Recommendations was set up in the year, 2001 and it as tied up with the Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) and Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) to boost up the industrial recycling of that area (Williams 2013).
Figure 3: a worker is removing the nails from a wood plank to make the wood reusable for future
(Source: Hoong, 2012)
In addition to the waste management process that has been taken up by the different private and public firms in Singapore, there is urgency that the people of Singapore should control their garbage disposal habit. Replacing the rubbish chutes the garbage bags is recommended for the houses in Singapore. The new houses should not be built with the rubbish chutes, instead there will the garbage bags for every house. As a result, there will be much less garbage accumulation as the people will be able to see the amount of garbage getting accumulated for each of the houses. If they require accumulating more garbage, then they will have to pay more for the extra garbage that will have to dispose.
In addition to this, it is recommended to the government that they should make the people aware of the ill effects of the accumulation of waste in Singapore. The people living in the residential areas as well as the owners of the industries should have proper idea about the amount of waste that is getting piled up every passing day. The industries are taking necessary measures to combat the problem of piling up of waste. The people living in the residential area should also know about the ill effects of the waste on the society. The people should be aware of the exact numbers so that they can help in reducing the waste of the county.
After going through various studies and feedback of the authors, it can be concluded that when on one hand, Singapore is facing issues combating the problems of waste, and on the other hand, it has taken necessary measures to treat those wastes in an effective manner. The rubbish chutes is helpful for the residents but it is also creating problem, as the accumulation is not visible to the people who are accumulating those wastes. The toxic wastes are also piling up due to the operations in the industries. The industries have taken necessary measures by building recycling parks so that the waste materials could be reused and recycled in future. Recommendations are being given to the residents so that there should be no more housing with the rubbish chutes. Instead of the rubbish chutes, there will be garbage bags where they will accumulate the wastes. For any extra waste, they will have to pay extra. In this way, the people will be able to see the amount of garbage that is being piled because of them. Once the problems in visible to the people, the awareness will automatically be spread among the Singaporeans.
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Chandrappa, R. and Brown, J., 2012. Solid waste management: Principles and practice. Springer Science & Business Media.
Chandrappa, R. and Das, D.B., 2012. Waste quantities and characteristics. In Solid Waste Management (pp. 47-63). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Ghiani, G., Laganà, D., Manni, E., Musmanno, R. and Vigo, D., 2014. Operations research in solid waste management: A survey of strategic and tactical issues. Computers & Operations Research, 44, pp.22-32.
Hoong, C. (2012). The Singapore Green Plan. 1st ed. [ebook] Singapore. Available at: https://www.mewr.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/grab-our-research/sgp2012.pdf [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
Karak, T., Bhagat, R.M. and Bhattacharyya, P., 2012. Municipal solid waste generation, composition, and management: the world scenario. Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 42(15), pp.1509-1630.
Laurent, A., Bakas, I., Clavreul, J., Bernstad, A., Niero, M., Gentil, E., Hauschild, M.Z. and Christensen, T.H., 2014. Review of LCA studies of solid waste management systems–Part I: Lessons learned and perspectives.Waste management, 34(3), pp.573-588.
Lim, J.W. and Wang, J.Y., 2013. Enhanced hydrolysis and methane yield by applying microaeration pretreatment to the anaerobic co-digestion of brown water and food waste. Waste management, 33(4), pp.813-819.
Melikoglu, M., Lin, C.S.K. and Webb, C., 2013. Analysing global food waste problem: pinpointing the facts and estimating the energy content. Central European Journal of Engineering, 3(2), pp.157-164.
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Othman, S.N., Noor, Z.Z., Abba, A.H., Yusuf, R.O. and Hassan, M.A.A., 2013. Review on life cycle assessment of integrated solid waste management in some Asian countries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 41, pp.251-262.
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The Straits Times, (2013). NEA plan seeks to limit damage from landfill expansion. [online] Eco-Business. Available at: https://www.eco-business.com/news/nea-plan-seeks-limit-damage-landfill-expansion/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016].
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