Why is Singapore’s recycling rate falling?
Why is Singapore’s recycling rate falling?
Instead, systemic issues – such as Singapore’s lack of domestic recycling facilities – pose larger obstacles in the country’s quest to recycle more.
In June, the National Environment Agency (NEA) released Singapore’s waste statistics for 2023, which showed that the overall recycling rate here had declined over the past decade, from 62 per cent in 2013 to 52 per cent in 2023.
This falls short of the 70 per cent goal set out in the 2030 Zero Waste Masterplan.
Ms Robin Rheaume, a long-time zero-waste advocate, said: “The low and dropping recycling rates are not primarily due to a lack of education and poor practices by consumers.”
She added: “While it is absolutely true that many consumers are putting the wrong things into the blue bins, it’s impossible to say that this is the primary issue or that this behaviour is getting worse.”
Ms Rheaume is the founder of Recyclopedia.sg, a volunteer-run website about recycling.
The NEA attributed the decline in overall recycling rate to structural factors, such as freight costs and commodity prices.
When freight rates are high, recyclers are less incentivised to collect recyclables, since exporting them overseas would entail higher shipment costs and narrow profit margins.
And when prices for recyclables are low, recyclers may choose to accumulate the materials until prices increase, if space permits.
Two-thirds of the waste Singapore generates come from the industrial sector, such as construction sites and factories.
Recyclable waste from this sector is usually cleaner and tends to be segregated, compared with the commingled recycling bins in housing estates, said Ms Tan Huileng, executive director of Zero Waste SG, a not-for-profit non-governmental organisation.
This means that the issue of contamination is not so prevalent in the industrial sector, and points to the fact that other factors could belie the lower recycling rate.
Limited domestic recycling capabilities
Singapore exports a portion of its recyclables to countries like Malaysia and Indonesia to be made into new products, such as benches or clothes made with recycled material, to be sold to consumers.
This subjects the business of recycling to international market forces.
In 2019, Minister for Sustainability and the Environment Grace Fu said in a written response to a parliamentary question that Singapore exported about 34 per cent of its recyclable waste that year. There is no publicly available data for subsequent years.
Building recycling facilities requires land, which is a precious commodity in Singapore.
Mr Cheang Kok Chung, executive director of the Singapore Environment Council, said: “Given the size of Singapore’s domestic market, there may not be sufficient recyclable feedstock to support large recycling facilities that are able to reap economies of scale.
“Furthermore, some recycling processes can be resource-intensive, in terms of land, water or energy.”
Recycling facilities, some featuring innovative technologies, have been under development for several years.
In 2023, Abraclean, the first recycling plant in Singapore that can repurpose glass waste into an abrasive that removes unwanted coatings such as rust and paint from metal surfaces in industrial applications, was officially opened.
Abraclean chairman Gurmit Singh said the company has already met the target of recycling 3,500 tonnes of glass waste in May, and that it is in talks to upscale its capabilities to recycle up to 35,000 tonnes of glass waste by processing construction and vehicle glass each year.
Recycling start-up Magorium was founded in 2019 to turn plastic waste into road construction material.
In February 2023, the Land Transport Authority said that it was in discussions with Magorium to trial its bitumen-like product, NewBitumen, on public roads.
Magorium founder Oh Shu Xian said that the company has paved nine roads – including driveways at the DBS Newton Green building, a condominium in Marymount, and a road near the Sentosa Sensoryscape attraction – and converted close to 100 tonnes of plastic waste into NewBitumen.
International developments
Since the bulk of Singapore’s recyclables have to be exported, the local recycling business is also subject to regulations that govern the transboundary movement of waste.
The Basel Convention, enacted in 1998, controls the international movement of hazardous and certain categories of non-hazardous waste such as household waste or residue from the incineration of household waste.
The convention was expanded to include contaminated, mixed or non-recyclable plastics in 2021.
Prior to the amendments, exporters were able to ship contaminated mixed and non-recyclable plastics across Singapore’s borders without obtaining consent from the countries receiving them.
In 2018, China’s “National Sword” policy banned the import of most plastics and other materials.
The country had previously processed nearly half of the world’s recyclables for more than two decades.
Prior to the changes, Singapore exported a substantial portion of its recyclables to China for processing. The ban’s restrictions made exporting much more difficult, especially for lower-quality or contaminated materials.
More recently, global shipping has been thrown into disarray as ships take longer routes to bypass dangerous attacks in the Red Sea.
Rerouting of shipping routes has led to increased operational costs, such as rises in fuel consumption.
Ms JacQueline Lim, managing director of Tai Hing Group, a local paper recycling company, said current freight costs have increased about three to four times more than usual, which is worse than during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ms Rheaume said: “These developments mean that transport costs will get pushed up. This makes the cost of purchasing waste materials from Singapore even more expensive, reducing demand for our recyclables.
“So we can expect this will have a negative impact on recycling rates.”
Generating less waste
Singapore is moving to be more self-sufficient in processing its waste, which could subject recycling companies here to fewer fluctuations in global supply chains. This could, in turn, help lift recycling rates.
But Singapore’s recycling infrastructure will take time to improve, given that the development of recycling capabilities and facilities is still in progress.
Tuas Nexus – an integrated waste and water treatment facility that can sort household recyclables and process food waste, on top of treating industrial used water for industrial use – is slated to be completed in phases from 2025 onwards.
Reducing waste should be prioritised instead of relying on recycling, Ms Rheaume said.
Already, Singapore’s one and only landfill in Semakau is expected to be fully filled by 2035, instead of 2045.
There are already encouraging signs.
NEA statistics showed that in 2023, each person generated 0.88kg of rubbish a day. This is less than the 0.9kg figure in 2022.
Ms Rheaume said that it was a good sign that the waste generated per person has reduced.
Under the Zero Waste Masterplan, Singapore aims to reduce the waste sent to the landfill each day by 30 per cent by 2030, so as to extend the landfill’s lifespan beyond 2035.
Said Ms Rheaume: “The bigger problem is consumption in the first place. And we’ve got a lot of consumption. Even really great recycling systems aren’t going to save us from the climate change impact of our consumption.”
She added: “Keep finding ways to not use so much single-use material. Avoid single-use glass for sure. Avoid single-use plastic. Don’t just substitute one single-use item for another.”