New guidelines to reduce e-commerce waste: Use old cardboard for fillers, no scotch tape on packages

SINGAPORE - Small parcels rolled up in thick bubble wrap and packed in oversized boxes could soon be a less common sight at doorsteps, now that new guidelines to limit packaging in the e-commerce sector have been released.

Drawn up by the industry in partnership with the Government, the new 133-page guide covers a range of solutions to reduce packaging waste in online shopping – from doing without scotch tape to avoid tainting the recyclability of a box, to shredding used cardboard for filler materials instead of using fresh materials.

“These solutions are rated based on effort required, cost and environmental impact. Companies can adopt solutions that best suit their needs to achieve cost savings and minimise environmental impact,” said Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Amy Khor, who announced the release of the guidelines on March 4 during the debate on her ministry’s budget.

She was responding to questions from MPs on how her ministry is tackling waste.

Nominated MP Jean See had asked for an update on the country’s measures to manage key waste streams, including packaging waste, while Mr Eric Chua (Tanjong Pagar GRC), who is also Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Culture, Community and Youth, pointed out that Singapore’s recycling scheme may need to be improved.

Packaging waste – from plastic bags to elaborate mooncake boxes – makes up about one-third of household waste in Singapore. In 2022, 60 per cent of packaging waste was plastic, while 30 per cent was paper. However, only 5 per cent of plastic waste was recycled in 2023.

Therefore, used packaging is a priority waste stream the Republic wants to tackle, alongside food and electronic waste.

In each day of 2023, an estimated 186,000 parcels were delivered in Singapore. This translates to 15,900 tonnes of mailing packaging generated that year.

While it is not clear whether the e-commerce guidelines could eventually be codified into law, the new guide joins a series of mandatory initiatives meant to help Singapore curb the amount of packaging waste it generates.

This includes

a charge on plastic bags at supermarkets,

and an upcoming scheme starting in 2026 that requires customers to

return their used drink bottles and cans

in order to receive a 10-cent refund per item.

Since 2022, companies have had to submit yearly reports on the amount of packaging they use for their products here, and their plans to reduce, reuse or recycle them.

The Republic has set targets to reduce the daily amount of waste sent to Semakau Landfill by 20 per cent by 2026, and 30 per cent by 2030. But, updating the House on the progress of this in early February, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and the Environment Baey Yam Keng said the amount of waste sent to the landfill each day has been similar to the daily amount in 2018.

Singapore’s only landfill is expected to be fully filled by 2035.

The new guidelines are a result of the Alliance for Action on Packaging Waste Reduction for the E-commerce Sector, which comprises 14 companies across the e-commerce supply chain, organisations and experts. The alliance is co-led by the Singapore Manufacturing Federation and the Singapore Post, and supported by the National Environment Agency (NEA).

The guide details ways in which packages from online shopping can be made leaner and less wasteful. To limit cardboard use alone, there are seven different solutions laid out, with the cost and benefits outlined to help firms decide which solution would be viable for them.

One option to reduce fresh filler material is to shred old boxes into fillers that can do the same job of protecting items during transport.

Watsons Singapore reduced its use of bubble wrap by repurposing shredded used cardboard boxes as filler material, saving up to 10 per cent in overall packaging procurement costs, said Dr Khor. The company installed a cardboard shredder in its warehouse.

To improve the recyclability of cardboard boxes, the guide also urged companies to replace the commonly used scotch tape with paper-based tape or dissolvable glue to seal boxes. This is because plastic tape slows down the recycling process at paper mills by interfering with the pulping and screening processes.

The guide also has a chapter on returning packaging materials so that they can be reused for future deliveries. The success of such a scheme depends on how willing customers are to return boxes or envelopes, the durability of materials, and protocols to ensure the hygiene of used packaging.

Food and medicine deliveries are not covered under the guide as those items need special packaging for safety, according to the guideline, which can be downloaded from the Packaging Partnership Programme website.

Capturing carbon from waste-to-energy plants

During the debate, Nominated MP Razwana Begum asked how sustainable practices and decarbonisation technologies will be promoted across the public and private sectors.

Dr Khor outlined ongoing work related to energy efficiency and carbon capture. In particular, by 2026, NEA will be embarking on a pilot to see if planet-warming carbon emissions from facilities that burn waste for energy can be captured, she said.

The pilot follows a 2022 study between the agency and Keppel Seghers – a waste-to-energy plant developer and operator – that looked into the feasibility of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from such plants here.

This will involve setting up carbon capture facilities at selected waste-to-energy plants, with an initial removal of a handful of tonnes of CO2 each day.

This is one of the first carbon capture projects announced in Singapore, a year after national water agency PUB said it will be building an ocean-based CO2 removal plant. The PUB demo plant, announced in 2024, is to be the world’s largest facility, and will remove some 3,650 tonnes of CO2 from the ocean yearly while helping the agency decarbonise its water treatment processes.

Located in Tuas, the US$20 million (S$27 million) plant was expected to begin operations from the last quarter of 2024, starting with removing one tonne of CO2 a day.

When asked about the progress of the plant – which is called Equatic-1 – PUB’s chief engineering and technology officer Gurdev Singh said the plant is now expected to commence operations in late 2025, starting with one tonne of CO2 removed each day.

The company behind the plant, Equatic, has requested additional time to work on the design of the base electrolyser and carbonator equipment to ensure high performance and efficiency of the plant. Equatic has also asked for additional time to procure and manufacture specialised components, such as the membranes and anodes of the electrolyser, added Dr Singh.

Singapore emitted 58.59 million tonnes of CO2 in 2022. For waste-to-energy plants, the aim of carbon capture is to remove residual emissions, said Dr Khor.

Given the low CO2 concentration of emissions from waste-to-energy plants, carbon capture methods that use chemicals to absorb CO2 from released emissions could be suitable, NEA told the Straits Times. At the heart of these technologies is a solvent that takes up CO2, before the planet-warming gas is compressed, liquefied and sealed away.

The pilot project will validate suitable carbon capture technologies, and more details will be shared when ready, said NEA.

By 2030, the country aims to capture about two million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – mainly from industrial activity – and possibly lock them away underground in rock formations or under the seabed overseas.

Waste-to-energy plants commonly release a gas mix comprising between 5 per cent and 15 per cent of CO2, and the exact concentration depends on the carbon content of the waste being incinerated, noted Associate Professor Liu Wen Paul from Nanyang Technological University’s School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology.

But emissions from waste-to-energy plants are more concentrated in CO2 compared with those from Singapore’s natural gas power plants, which contain 4 per cent to 5 per cent CO2, he said.

Emissions from energy or chemical plants on Jurong Island would contain higher concentrations of CO2.

Prof Liu said: “Pilot CO2 capture projects typically aim to validate technological and commercial feasibility, operational stability, and to identify potential challenges (in scaling up). The commercial viability of carbon capture projects also depends on many other factors, such as the cost of fuels, the end use of the captured CO2 and the business model.”