Three town councils to start pilot recycling programme
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THREE town councils will start pilot recycling programmes in their housing estates next month. The three are the Tanjong Pagar, Aljunied and Brick-works town councils.
If successful, the scheme may lead to a national recycling programme, with bins in every housing estate collecting paper, plastics, glass and drink cans for recycling.
A fourth town council, Marine Parade, is also believed to be considering joining the pilot scheme.
The Environment Ministry’s Waste Minimisation Department reports that with the latest project, there are now about 350 recycling schemes throughout the island.
The schemes are run by schools, condominiums, hotels, offices, government departments, country clubs and hospitals.
This represents a 12 per cent increase over March. Although still limited in scale, the various schemes have collected over 270 tonnes of paper and 2,615 kg of cans since 1990, when the Waste Minimisation Department was set up.
It takes 15 trees to produce a tonne of paper, so the impact on the environment is not a small one.
The ministry said that it has a long-term programme to implement waste recycling schemes in all town councils.
The three town councils in the pilot scheme have tied up with Asia Pacific Breweries (APB), which is sponsoring the project by providing the recycling bins to collect paper and cans.
An APB spokesman said that if the pilot project was well-received, It might consider implementing it on a national scale.
The maintenance and operation of the bins would be left to the town councils, she added.
The councils’ conservancy contractors will collect the waste and deposit them in a bin compound where the rag-and-bone man or a recycling contractor will pick them up.
Earlier recycling programmes have received a somewhat mixed response from the public, with some reporting more rubbish than recyclable material collected, but APB is confident that by targeting specific housing estates where the community at large will have access to the bins, It can help raise Singaporeans’ green awareness.
Despite the pioneering experience of the former Redhill Town Council, the Tanjong Pagar Town council is more confident of seeing a better response from the 2,000 residents whose apartment blocks will have centralised recycling bins in the new scheme.
The Tanjong Pagar and Redhill town councils were merged last month.
The Redhill recycling scheme started in 1900. The general manager of the Tanjong Pagar Town council, Mr Zulkifli Baharudin, said that after a good start, the response cooled and some people ended up throwing rubbish in the bins.
"We are frying a new approach with this scheme and are placing the bins in estates with bigger flats, like the five room and HUDC apartments at Spottiswoode Park, Gilman Heights, Telok Blangah and Alexandra," he said.
He added that in estates like Leng Kee and Bukit Merah, which have smaller flats, more public education was needed before the scheme could became popular with the residents.
The town council has collected about $5,000 from the sale of the material. The money, as with the other recycling schemes by Jurong East and Cheng San town councils, has gone back to the community, as bursaries for needy students.
With more participation, the ministry hopes to increase the amount of waste paper recycled from 40 per cent to 43 per cent by this year.
It is hoped the figure will rise to 55 per cent in seven years. Last year, about 230,000 tonnes of waste paper were recycled here.
Paper, cardboard and wood wastes take up almost a third of the 5,600 tonnes of rubbish disposed of daily in Singapore.
In an earlier check, at least 17 town councils said they had plans to start recycling programmes in their estates.
But officials from these councils stressed that residents must be educated on the use of the bins and the benefits of recycling through home visits by Residents’ Committee members.
Recycling would also be made more convenient by placing bins at strategic locations, such as carparks and common areas, and not behind staircases.
Source : The Straits Times, May 25 1992
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