Singapore, we have a plastic crisis
This is a six-part series of a report I prepared for WWF SG National Competition. My essay can also be found here: https://competition.wwf.sg/winners/2019.
Fifteen plastic bottles a second. Thirteen plastic bags per person a day. All in Singapore alone. Singapore’s paltry plastics recycling rate fell from 11% in 2013 to 4% in 2019. With each passing year, the situation worsens; the scene a little darker: Singapore hits new highs in usage, new lows in recycling.
The harmful environmental effects of plastic are well known. Littered by the non-civic minded individuals? It floats out into the sea, strangling an estimated 100,000 marine animals to death every year. Burnt to clear? You get air pollution: organic pollutants and toxic metals like lead and cadmium are found in the end-product of incineration bottom ash. Buried instead? Toxic chemicals still leach out to pollute the soil.
Singapore handles our plastic waste almost impeccably. There's no air, water and land pollution resulting from plastics, after all! Or so we think.
The difficulty of communicating the scale of the problem lies in the invisibility of plastic pollution in Singapore. But in fact, the severity of this conspicuous plastic consumption cannot be overemphasized.
It is trans-boundary in nature: We depend on other countries to manage a portion of our plastic scrap. (and risk an extremely high rate of waste mismanagement there)
It has changed our mindsets: plastic’s pervasiveness fooled us into believing that individual actions don’t matter, just like attitudes towards climate action. It even engenders a sense of entitlement towards using limited resources.
It shapes plastic as the only consumer choice because anything else is too inconvenient - a synonym, we think, for impossible. It says that tossing waste is a right.
Hence through this article I will bring you to grasp the current public perception of Singapore’s mounting plastic waste issue, and examine the feasibility of popular suggested solutions.