“Any success always goes with the mandatory law and regulation.”
– Mr Venkatesha Murthy, managing director at Vans Chemistry
Basal Convention
The Basel Convention controls of export, import and transit of hazardous wastes. Singapore acceded to this on in 1996.
This ensures that any person or organisations within Singapore, who wishes to export, import or transit hazardous wastes, needs to obtain a permit from the Pollution Control Department (PCD). The permit will only be granted when PCD determined that the relevant authorities of the receiving countries have given their consent for the export of E-waste (Singapore Customs, n.a.).
This is a very forward-looking initiative by the Singapore government, as this ensures that we do not support illegal backyard E-waste sites. All South-East Asian countries have acceded to the Basel Convention, except for Brunei (Basal Convention, n.a.)
Within Singapore
However, a UNU report (2017) reported that Singapore has a high number of transboundary movements of E-waste, which is generated locally and in transit from other countries. It would seem that despite the Basal Convention, we are still not treating E-waste dumping as a serious issue.
In our small country, electronic device ownership is almost 100%. However, wr have not enforced any formal E-waste recycling laws. As such, most initiatives are voluntary in nature. According to NEA, Singapore has good management of E-waste via an active second-hand market and successful local recycling initiatives. Moreoever, the amount of E-waste we produce can be handled by the current recycling facilities available.
With the growing amount of E-waste that Singaporeans are producing, we need to look at the possibility of enforcing formal collection and improving our recycling infrastructure. Not only do we need preventive measures such as urging our people to consume less, we also need better reactionary measures to handle our increasing E-waste production.
A way to improve recycling rates is to increase more manufacturers’ obligation to have their own collection initiatives for their products’ end of life. Because this participation is voluntary, there are only a few manufacturers in Singapore who adopts E-waste recycling.
The government can then support them by linking these companies to our local businesses – such as Virogreen – that have the techniques to properly dispose of E-waste. This is as opposed to third-parties who might engage in illegal E-waste dumping activities. The International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), values each tonne of E-waste at $500 (Martin, 2015), which is to say that the E-waste disposal industry can be worth up to $33 million just from Singapore’s amount of E-waste alone.
We have to enforce rules to ensure that we are not engaging in “toxic colonialism” (Martin, 2015), which is the process by which toxic or hazardous waste is exported to developing countries simply because it is a cheap alternative for disposal.