RE-WIRED was a non-profit environmental awareness campaign that encouraged Singaporeans age 18 to 25 to reduce their e-waste by giving their small electronics a second life.

E-waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the world. Singapore generates approximately 60,000 tonnes of e-waste a year and is the second largest generator of e-waste per capita in Asia. In 2021, NEA will implement a mandatory e-waste management system. However, there is currently no official system in place.

Electronics require proper treatment and disposal. They contain harmful substances that pose significant health and environmental threats when dumped in landfills or incinerated. They are densely packed with precious metals that are more efficiently extracted from used electronics as opposed to natural ore, conserving Earth’s finite resources. Reducing e-waste in Singapore also reduces strain on Semakau Landfill, which is expected to run out of space by 2035.

Therefore, the campaign educated the target audience to reduce e-waste by donating, trading in, repairing, reselling and recycling. This will come in as a timely push to encourage e-waste reducing behaviours and to prepare Singaporeans for NEA’s mandatory e-waste management system in 2021.

 

The Highlights

RE-WIRED ran from 10 December 2018 to 29 March 2019.

The big idea was to personify everyday electronics to evoke a closer and more intimate bond between owner and their electronics. This idea stemmed from anthropomorphism, or ascribing a non-human entity with human qualities like emotions. Research has found that people exhibit more pro-environment behaviour when they anthropomorphise nature. In the same vein, anthropomorphising inanimate electronics can evoke pro-environment behaviours in individuals when dealing with unwanted electronics.

The team developed five campaign messages to tie in with their tagline: WEEE deserve a second life (WEEE = Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment). These five messages encompassed key e-waste reducing behaviours that the team hoped to encourage through this campaign:

  1. Donate, don’t accumulate
  2. Recycle, don’t be idle
  3. Repair, don’t despair
  4. Resell, don’t say farewell
  5. Trade in, don’t feed the bin

The campaign strategy was formed with the overall goal of encouraging Singaporean youth to give their electronics a second life by rewiring mindsets and personifying electronics. According to their research, the team found that social norms was the most significant factor to the performance of e-waste reducing behaviours, followed by self-efficacy.

RE-WIRED ran in three phases: Awareness, Engagement and Commitment.

Phase 1: Awareness generated buzz and raised awareness about e-waste and the five e-waste reducing behaviours. Watch the video below where the team interviewed passerby on their understanding of e-waste and how much e-waste they thought they produced in 2018.

Phase 2: Engagement engaged individuals to pledge (through online quizzes and Instagram contests) and do any of the five recommended e-waste reducing behaviours. Watch the life story of a phone from its point of purchase to its “death”, and in turn to encourage their followers to comment on how they would have given the phone a second life.

Phase 3: Commitment committed individuals to their intentions by providing platforms (roadshows at NTU, NUS and SMU) to physically engage in the behaviour. The team positioned these roadshows as e-waste donation and recycling drives, to give a clear call-to-action for students to bring their unwanted electronics. The team also gave out Ultimate Guides on How to Reduce E-Waste, which were flyers that guided individuals on how they could give their electronics a second life.

The Memories

Minister Masagos Zulkifli giving a opening speech for RE-WIRED: The Exhibition.
Participant sketching the life story of her pre-love electronic device.
Participants taking a photo at the roadshow photobooth.
Participant giving her unwanted electronics a second life.
Participants reading the education materials at the roadshow.

Reflection #1 – The Challenges

Lack of available research on e-waste.

As the government had only recently turned its focus to e-waste, there was a lack of academic resources and formal research about e-waste in Singapore to guide the formulation of our campaign. Therefore, the team conducted their own survey and interviews with experts to gain further insight into the e-waste situation in Singapore. However, due to lack of time and resources, the survey research was limited in generalisability.

Inexperienced event planning.

Due to the team’s inexperience in event planning (RE-WIRED: The Exhibition), the team hired an event company (V Concepts) to help. The team also actively sought advice from NTU Museum and friends with experience on how to run an event smoothly.

Reflection #2 – The Takeaways

Successfully drove behavioural change.

As the first e-waste awareness campaign in Singapore targeting youth aged 18 to 25, the team was happy to achieve almost all their objectives. Besides generating conversation about e-waste, they also managed to drive actual behavioral change — 388 kg of e-waste was recycled, donated or repaired throughout the campaign!

Compliments from individuals.

The team was especially heartened with the positive comments by individuals who visited their roadshows and RE-WIRED: The Exhibition, and expressed their opinions regarding the need for more education about e-waste in Singapore.

Many others expressed surprise about what actually e-waste comprised of (e.g. wires and earpieces), and thanked the team for sharing information about what they initially knew very little about. Some individuals also shared about e-waste through their social media.

Outreach efforts.

The team could have extended their outreach to other tertiary institutions such as private universities and polytechnics, because feedback for university roadshows were largely positive.

Increased focus on e-waste recycling efforts.

A common question that the public asked was where to recycle e-waste apart from RE-WIRED’s roadshows and exhibition. Since there are many existing permanent e-waste recycling bins around Singapore, increased promotion about this would have facilitated the sustainability of proper e-waste recycling behaviours.

Lack of manpower.

The team also learnt first-hand how immensely difficult it was for a small group of four people to organise a campaign of this scale. While coming up with creative ideas was easy, executing them turned out to be much harder. Nevertheless, the project was a huge success, and the team realised that Singaporeans are actually very open to the idea of reducing their e-waste and being more environmentally friendly.