Not long ago, societies were pretty good at following the old adage “waste not, want not”. Not so in today’s consumer society. Wealthy nations produce mountains of household waste every year, representing huge amounts of the Earth’s resources. In 2022, households in Singapore generated 1.86 million tonnes of waste, of which 12 per cent was recycled – down 1 percentage point from 2021. Put another way, each of the 5.63 million people living in the Republic generated about 330kg of waste, a mix of plastic and paper packaging, drink containers and discarded food. Not as bad as Australia – about 500kg per person – but not ideal in a tiny, land-scarce nation.

Singapore also generated 813,000 tonnes of food waste in 2022, of which 18 per cent was recycled. Households generated more than half this waste, underscoring the challenge in prompting residents to buy and eat only what is needed. Plastic waste is another challenge – the nation generated a million tonnes of it in 2022 and only 6 per cent was recycled, the rest burned in waste-to-energy plants. Singaporeans have been taking active steps to recycle, but contamination remains a big problem. According to the National Environment Agency, about 40 per cent of what is collected in the blue recycling bins is contaminated with food or liquid waste or are reusables wrongly disposed of as recyclables. This can degrade the export value of recyclables and even make them unsuitable for recycling.