Since most people live in condos, it should be even more efficient than in many other places to separate paper from aluminum cans or other items and put them in the correct bin for recycling. Such a small country, with only one site at Palau Semakau for a garbage landfill, also has a big incentive to recycle.

With recycling bins hard to find in many condos and seemingly non-existent in malls or other public places, it may seem like recycling is difficult and the level of recycling is low. Hard as it may be for some people to believe, though, the recycling rate here is actually one of the highest in the world. The total percentage of waste that’s recycled has risen from about 44 percent in 2001 to 57 percent in 2009, and the target is 60 percent by 2012.

That’s actually quite far ahead of some other countries that might seem like they do more. While the United States may sometimes look like a leader in recycling, for example, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the US actually only recycles about 33 percent of its Municipal Solid Waste.

Some other countries do have higher numbers. Germany recycles nearly 80 percent of its packaging waste, for example, and Japan recycles about 88 percent of its steel cans. Data like this focuses on just parts of the total amount of waste, however, and total recycling is lower. If we just look at total recycling, then a country like Austria is one of the leaders in Europe and it too is just below 60 percent. It turns out that Singapore is a perhaps-surprising leader. 

Household waste

What may make it seem like recycling rates are lower here is the difficulty with recycling everyday household waste. Much of Singapore’s high rate of recycling comes from commercial products like construction waste and metals going straight to recycling centers. Finding a place to recycle paper, plastic or cans, on the other hand, can be challenging. As Esther Ng reported recently in Today newspaper, for example, “the recycling rate for paper, glass and plastic for both households and businesses in 2009 were only 48 per cent, 21 per cent and 9 per cent respectively.” Recycling batteries still seems virtually impossible.

Despite those low percentages, there are actually a number of programs in place to encourage or even to require household recycling. Much of the framework for this recycling comes from Green Plan 2012, a ten-year plan developed and launched by the Ministry of the Environment in 2002. Along with targeting 60 percent recycling overall, the Ministry said the goal was “minimising the amount of waste generated and recycling as much as is feasible.”

There are a variety of programs designed to help move recycling rates higher, and also to reduce waste in the first place so that there’s less need for recycling. According to the National Environment Agency (NEA), for example, the National Recycling Programme (NRP) that was announced in April 2001 now requires Public Waste Collectors “to provide recycling bags or bins to all households in HDB and private landed property estates to store their recyclables for fortnightly door-to-door collections on pre-determined days.” Regulations that require condominiums to provide receptacles for recycling within their estates and to send the recyclables collected for recycling date back to 2008, and the Housing Development Board (HDB) is also working on increasing recycling in Singapore.

For anyone who wants to get more involved in recycling, there are a variety of sources of information. Along with the Ministry of Environment website and the NEA websites here or here, other good sources include ZeroWasteSG and the list of places to recycle on the Singapore Environment Council website.

So what can you do to increase recycling?

One step is obviously to take action personally and recycle as much of your household waste as possible. If your condo or estate doesn’t make recycling easy, you could also encourage the management to make recycling easier and provide more recycling bins. Another is to work on promoting recycling programs inside your company. Along with internal recycling programs, IT companies like HP and Dell have recycling programs for the equipment they sell, for example.

While there’s always room to do more, it’s encouraging to know that there is more recycling in Singapore than we might think and there are more resources than one might think to turn to for advice as well.

Earth Hour Singapore 2011 - Official celebration party
Venue: The Promontory @ Marina Bay
MRT: Raffles Place exit J
Date: Saturday, 26 March 2011
Time: 5.30 – 10.00 pm

Click here for more info