Have you ever wondered where the bag of waste you dump into the chute goes to? It may disappear from our sight and minds, but the rubbish doesn t just go away. Many bags of waste are collected according to a centralised system, and then transported straight to incineration plants. Currently, Singapore has 4 commissioned incinerators Senoko Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant, Keppel Seghers, and two in Tuas. On 8 January, Earthlink organised a site visit to the Senoko Waste-to-Energy plant as part of Earthlink s Waste Journey Trail. Participants were given an educational tour around the facility by a friendly plant operator, who also studied in NTU.
The Senoko WTE plant is located at the north, and serves the east side of Singapore. It processes the largest amount of waste daily. The waste may be sorted out for plastics which hinder the burning process, as well as flammable items. Waste is burnt so as to reduce its volume by up to 90%, after which the ash will be transported and landfilled at Semakau. Burning waste generates a fair amount of heat, which has to go somewhere (as we are all familiar with the law of energy conservation). In the plant, this heat is captured to generate steam, which is directed to turn a turbine to generate electricity; hence the name Waste-to-Energy plant.
It may seem somewhat pointless to know about all this dirty, behind-the-scenes stuff; how many of us truly ponder about and appreciate the organised waste management system we have in Singapore? Having not lived in the past where rubbish lined the streets and rivers, how can we imagine what life was then without proper waste management? We all owe the people working on proper waste handling a big round of applause. Despite common perception, waste management is not a dirty process it is an organised system that maintains proper sanitation and techniques in handling the waste we all generate. The people working in incineration plants are not unfortunate people who are stuck with doing dirty and smelly things they are hard workers who help keep our country clean.
All the participants had varying levels of revelation as they learnt more about the back-end processes of waste management the most significant of which was that our waste is not sorted through for recyclables before being incinerated. Metals are sieved out of the burnt ash via a huge electromagnet before landfilling, but items in perfect condition such as bedframes, mattresses, cupboards, and glass, are all burnt without distinction. This is a huge waste of useful resources that could have seen a new life outside of the incineration plant. The 60% recycling rate in Singapore comes mainly from the items put into the big blue bins near households.
Clearly, we cannot be ignorant and complacent, taking for granted that things will all be taken care of by someone. Knowing this, we can all do our part by sorting out the recyclables from our waste. Yet, it is not enough just to recycle items. Why do we think the 3R s are ordered by Reduce, Reuse, Recycle? Recycling prevents a take-make-waste society, but reusing is inherently better than recycling as it excludes all the energy-intensive processes to make a downgraded product. Reduce is the most encouraging action we can take, since it eliminates all the wasted resources and problems down the road.