Forum: Singapore’s recycling strategy must be inclusive

Singapore’s domestic recycling rate remains dismally low, with contamination in recycling bins cited as a key cause. In response, the National Environment Agency is considering material-based sorting (

Sorting recyclables by material could boost low domestic recycling rate: Observers;

Aug 6).

As a researcher in sustainable consumption at the Newcastle Research and Innovation Institute in Singapore, I have been studying what makes recycling systems work. My focus is on upstream sorting – not only in households but also across the community. For success, three fundamentals underpinning inclusivity must be addressed: government policy, household practices, and community responsibility in public areas.

The Government’s role is to set a clear national sorting policy, with firm sorting requirements for households. Such a policy must set out incentives and penalties to ensure compliance, and sustained education. Providing incentives rewards proper recycling while penalties deter negligence so that compliance feels fair and achievable. Public education on recycling must be year-round and sustained, with instructions refreshed regularly and help available for households.

Households’ role is to commit time, effort and space. This means the daily routines of sorting: checking what belongs in disposal or recycling, separating items correctly, compressing waste to save space, bagging food waste to control odour, and storing items until collection.

In Japan, such routines are demanding but workable. Still, routines alone are not enough. There are other aspects of behaviour, such as asking “Do I really need this?” and “What will I do with this when it is no longer useful?” before buying it. Together, such habits guard against complacency and reinforce the purpose of recycling.

Finally, the community’s role in public areas is to eliminate littering and ensure resources are not lost by properly disposing of waste. Stricter anti-littering enforcement is limited by the difficulty of catching offenders in the act. Even recycling bins that are better designed to reduce contamination can still be misused.

Thus the nuts and bolts lie in whether we are prepared to embrace social accountability in public spaces – including the expectation that we take our rubbish home when bins are not available, to dispose of or recycle – so that proper disposal becomes a norm rather than a courtesy.

Goh Kheng Lim