“Troublesome! It costs too much.”

Barriers to food waste recycling in Singapore

Nonchalant attitudes

Food waste recycling is often perceived as discretionary, i.e. good behaviour beyond the established norms, as food providers view efforts to reduce food waste as neither directly related to their performance or productivity. It would appear to them that there is little to no utilitarian benefit of food waste recycling. In fact, the additional work that arises from doing so increases the costs of production, serving as yet another deterrent to this “discretionary” behaviour.

The cultural habit of ‘throwing everything away’, rather than spending the time and effort to sort and recycle, is an expression of a nonchalant or uncaring attitude amongst people that needs to be changed. This could potentially be resolved by raising public awareness through public education outreach programmes, although such programmes do have its own weaknesses:

While educational programmes appear to change explicit attitudes, there is little knowledge of whether implicit attitudes have really been influenced – perhaps the reason why studies of attitudinal changes do not always report equivalent changes in behaviours.

Lack of existing infrastructure

The lack of basic infrastructure, such as the provision of bins to sort food waste from other refuse, is an aspect of the problem that should be tackled first before attempting to increase food recycling rate through various means such as public education.

While it may seem easy to provide simple items such as recycling bins, the reality is: It is not being done. Although it is understandable that attitudinal change appears to be more essential in tackling environmental issues, there needs to be recognition that it is difficult to drastically change the behaviours of individuals. Even when equipped with the environmental knowledge, there is little incentive for individuals to take the extra effort actively seek out a recycling bin to dispose of their garbage, or in the case of food providers, to spend the extra cost and time to seek out food recycling companies. By bringing the solutions to their doorsteps, companies would have less of an excuse to not engage in food recycling behaviours.

Net costs to recycling

The manpower and logistical costs of sorting food waste is amongst the many issues that underlie food waste recycling. Others include the comparative lower cost of food waste disposal, space constraints and unpleasant smells.

According to the Inter-Ministry Committee on Food Security, food providers have reflected that the amount of food waste generated on site is not enough to be cost-effective. In a cost-benefit analysis study commissioned by NEA in 2010, it was found that there is a net cost of recycling food waste at a centralised recycling facility, mainly due to the costs involved in the collection and processing of the food waste.

This signals the need for the development of better technology, along with improved waste segregation systems, for greater efficiency and hence lowering the costs of food waste recycling. Greater incentives could also be provided to cover the net cost of food waste recycling, as a means of encouraging food providers to engage in the behaviour.

To tackle the issue, NEA has set in place various schemes to encourage the innovation and development of such waste management systems or technology:

This includes the 3R Fund, a co-funding scheme that has been set in place to encourage organisations to undertake waste minimalisation and recycling projects. The 3R Fund will co-fund up to 80% of qualifying costs, subject to a cap of S$1 million per project or per application, of projects with new and innovative processes and concepts which targets waste streams with low recycling rates, including food.

In addition, the Innovation for Environmental Sustainability (IES) Fund is a grant “targeted at projects at the applied research and test-bedding/demonstration stages of technology developments”. Aimed at encouraging and assisting Singapore-registered companies to engage in environmental protection and public health related projects that would contribute to the long-term environmental sustainability of the nation, the IES Fund grants companies a maximum of S$2 million for the project.