Many residents lack the knowledge on proper recycling practices. Despite the NEA’s efforts to increase public accessibility to recycling bins, as much as 40% of the items that goes into our blue recycling bins cannot be recycled. These items include both contaminated recyclables, with food or liquid, and non-recyclables such as tissue papers, toys, and clothes. Contaminated items are analogous to a sick person, spreading its “germs” or contaminants to other “healthy” recyclable items. This deems those contaminated recyclables no longer fit for reprocessing. Furthermore, disposing items which are not recyclable decreases the efficiency of the waste management process especially in the manual sorting process and require additional disposal step.
“They might engage in ‘wishful’ recycling, where they hope an item can be recycled or repurposed in some ways and thus place them in the blue recycling bin, which in turn causes inefficiency in the waste management process,” Ms Pek Hai Lin, manager of Zero Waste SG.
How do you feel if you see this below your HDB block? Do you still trust Singapore’s the recycling system?
“When someone goes to drop off their recyclables in the blue bin, and spot regular trash in the same bin, their belief in the system, rightfully so, may reduce,” noted Plastic-Lite Singapore founder Aarti Giri.
At the sight of the image above, I think many people would experience a sense of repulsion towards recycling, or even reduced confidence in the nation’s recycling system. In such situations, many might feel that any added recycling efforts would go to waste and perceive having less control in recycling behaviours. This shows that poor recycling habits of an individual can negatively impact others’ emotions, attitude, and perceived behavioural control in recycling. Subsequently, negative attitude and reduced perceived control can directly and indirectly lead to reduction in recycling behaviours according to the theory of planned behaviour.
Therefore, this suggest a need to increase public awareness and education to close the knowledge gap.