SINGAPORE – To increase the scale of recycling in Singapore, the authorities are looking to redevelop a recycling park in Lim Chu Kang, which is home to a number of recycling facilities, The Straits Times has learnt. 

The National Environment Agency (NEA) has called for a tender to study the proposed redevelopment of Sarimbun Recycling Park to improve land use and land productivity of recycling there.

The 30ha recycling park handles about a fifth of Singapore’s recycling, including of construction waste, plastics, wood and horticultural waste, turning them into useful materials. 

The rest of Singapore’s waste is recycled at various locations such as Tuas, Jurong and Sungei Kadut.

As part of the recycling process, waste materials have to be cut, crushed and shredded, requiring large stockpiles of waste to be held. This has the potential for fire and is land-intensive, according to NEA’s tender documents.

The agency told ST that it wants a study conducted to look into improving the recycling park’s infrastructure and facilities, and optimising the space so it can house other land-intensive recycling operations such as processing bulky plastic waste.

NEA said the redeveloped recycling park should be ready for new tenants by end-2029.

While the recycling park is managed by NEA, it is divided into smaller plots of land and leased to recycling companies.

The plans for redevelopment are part of NEA’s ongoing efforts to build up local recycling capabilities, and to meet its national waste reduction targets under the Singapore Green Plan 2030 and the Zero Waste Masterplan, which includes raising the national recycling rate to 70 per cent by 2030.

NEA is also looking to reduce the amount of waste sent to Semakau Landfill per person per day by 30 per cent. 

According to NEA’s data as at 2022, the overall recycling rate was at 57 per cent, up from 55 per cent in 2021. The non-domestic recycling rate was at 72 per cent, up from 70 per cent in 2021, while the domestic recycling rate fell from 13 per cent in 2021 to 12 per cent.

Some 99 per cent of construction and demolition waste was recycled in 2022, as was 85 per cent of horticultural waste such as tree trunks, branches, and plant trimmings from pruning. In addition, 71 per cent of wood waste, which includes wooden pallets, crates and boxes and construction wood, was recycled.

In tender documents seen by ST, the consultant appointed will have to conduct an environmental impact assessment on the areas surrounding the recycling park, including the impact of redevelopment on water quality in the Western Catchment and the mangroves in Lim Chu Kang. Biodiversity surveys will also have to be conducted to determine the impact on various flora and fauna.

As the future Lim Chu Kang North agri-food cluster located to the east of Sarimbun Recycling Park will be home to a variety of producers of leafy vegetables, mushrooms and fruited vegetables, the consultant will also have to study whether recycling activities could potentially contaminate these plants through the transport and deposit of heavy metals and other pollutants.

Studies will also have to be done to assess whether discharge from the recycling park will have an impact on coastal fish farms along the Western Johor Strait. Future land-based aquaculture farms may also draw seawater from there, NEA noted.

An environmental monitoring and management plan will have to be drawn up based on the results of these impact assessments to ensure, among other measures, proper pollution control. 

To boost local recycling rates, NEA is separately looking to set up a plastic recovery facility that can sort through general waste and recover plastics for chemical recycling.  

The facility, which is expected to be ready from 2027, will be able to recycle about 240,000 tonnes of waste from domestic sources such as households, shophouses and hawker centres annually. 

This will reduce the amount of plastic waste that is being incinerated, which would reduce Singapore’s carbon emissions and improve its plastic recycling rates.

In 2022, only 6 per cent of plastic waste was recycled, while the remaining 924,000 tonnes were incinerated.

One of the possible pathways for chemical recycling is to convert the plastics into pyrolysis oil, which can be used as feedstock for the petrochemical sector to produce new chemicals and plastics, said NEA.

The agency said it recently received preliminary interest from several private sector players to develop the plastic recovery facility. It will be making a formal Request for Information to better gauge the interest, capabilities and capacity to develop the facility in Singapore as a privately operated commercial facility.

A recent study showed that there are 170 trillion bits of plastic floating in the world’s oceans, many of them microplastics. Microplastics have been found in human lungs – from inhalation, especially of indoor air – as well as in human faeces, placenta and blood.

A 2019 study by the World Wide Fund for Nature concluded that humans ingest an average of 5g of plastic – the equivalent of one credit card – every week.