As the stakeholder with the most influential power, what are some government efforts in reducing the littering problem and what more can be done to improve the effectiveness?
Fines & CWO
NEA has been efficiently catching litter-bugs and fines are given to them as a result to ensure that they bear the consequences of their actions. First-time offenders are fined at $2,000, $4,000 for second-time offenders and $10,000 for third and subsequent convictions. Though fines are effective to some group of people, there are others who may not be affected greatly by fines and instead retaliate against it.
The Corrective Work Order (CWO) is crucial to allow offenders to experience the cleaning up process which could instil the idea of hardship for cleaners to clean up litter. Hence it can help offenders to empathize with the cleaners’ experience which will then reduce future littering.
CWO can be further improved by having offenders to lead anti-littering outreach campaigns as suggested by Mr Tham in the Straits Times forum. By leading and organising such campaigns, offenders may have a change of attitude towards littering over time or find it troublesome to handle all the campaigns. Either way, offenders will bear the responsibility of their littering behaviour and will reduce their littering tendency after such program.
~Working together with the community~
Since 2013, a community volunteer scheme has been launched where groups such as Singapore Environment Council and Cats Society Welfare have joined to persuade litterbugs to clean up their own trash. If the litterbugs exhibit uncooperative behavior, the volunteer groups are allowed to give details of the litterbugs to authorities who will then handle the case.
An improvement of this will be the authority given to these groups to help NEA authorities in catching and giving fines to people who litter. This can instil some fear to the public with regards to littering as authorized members can be walking among them to issue them a fine if they litter. Therefore, it may be possible to reduce the littering problem.
Public Education
NEA has been actively organising educational programs for students in schools to raise the awareness of littering and how they can play a role by recycling or simply not to litter. This can be further improved where schools take a step further by encouraging students to apply what they have learned.
~Working Together with schools~
After having educational programs to increase awareness of littering among students, schools (particularly primary schools) can initiate a simple anti-litter reinforcement program where students will be given a card to receive stamps from teachers whenever they exhibit anti-littering behaviours. The objective of this program is to encourage students to apply what they have learned from NEA’s educational programs and cultivate a litter-free behaviour from a young age. Students who exhibit anti-littering behaviours will be given a stamp from the teachers thus incentivising them to continue such behaviour in the future. Students who managed to obtain a certain number of stamps will be rewarded. This will help to reinforce the behaviour since young and cultivate new generations of individuals to be more conscious of littering.
~Working Together with organisations~
Education in organisations and companies are also needed to ensure all employees and even employers to understand the impacts of littering. This is particularly useful for foreign employees as they are not exposed to earlier educational programs in schools. Littering awareness can help even the adults to be conscious of their littering behaviours and allow foreign employees to understand the importance of keeping the city clean.
Companies can further encourage individual’s effort in reducing litter generated by providing environmentally-friendly bags for employees to use to replace the use of plastic bags. Also, companies can provide water coolers such as those in the Singapore Zoo where it shows the number of bottles saved just by using the water coolers to refill instead of getting plastic bottles.
Improvements on Litterbins
Many people cite the lack of litterbins as one of the cause and this can be addressed by placing more bins at accessible areas. For areas that have bins which are always filled up quickly should be replaced with larger bins to accommodate the needs of the people in the area.
Furthermore, most bins currently have smaller openings which result in the restriction of litter that can be thrown in, as such, litter will be found around the bins instead of being in the bin. Hence bins design is crucial in ensuring that larger trash is able to fit into the bin with ease.