It started as a school paper on local waste management that earned three Nanyang Technological University (NTU) undergraduates an ‘A’ grade last year (2017).
But it didn’t end there as the trio saw real-life potential in it. In less than a year, the engineering students, who are all in their final year, had produced a Web application that taught consumers how to recycle and promised incentives when they did.
In the course of research for their paper, they discovered that Singapore’s recycling rates were far lower than that of many First World countries.
In South Korea, for instance, more than 50% of domestic waste is recycled, compared with 21% here last year.
“We felt we could do something about it,” said co-developer Lek Zhi Yu, 24. As an exchange student in South Korea in 2016, he saw how residents travelled miles just to take their neatly packaged recyclables to a recycling bin.
“In Singapore, all we do is dump it in the blue recycling bin, but I think about half of the items can’t be recycled because they’re contaminated by being wet or dirty,” he said.
Fellow co-developer Ang Wei Loong, 25, feels it is a cultural problem. “People think it’s a hassle to recycle because they have to sort or clean the recyclable materials… We want to change the recycling culture here.”
The three decided to ride the gaming trend, using a Web application with a points system that would give people incentives to recycle.
The team built the app using a $10,000 grant from NTU’s innovation and enterprise arm, and charges companies a sum for running the programme in workplaces.
Since their company, Surf, was incorporated in March, the students have run campaigns at four companies, both multinational and small home-grown firms.
The trio believe the app’s biggest advantage is the educational aspect.
The third co-developer, Mr Wong Song Wei, 25, said: “We hope that through incentivising them to recycle, and by allowing them to track their contributions, it can encourage them to recycle more.
“We have limited landfill space, so we need to make sure that our future generations will still have space to grow.”
Watch the video below for an explanation on the usage of the app.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 19 December 2018